Part 2: Are Miracles Possible? 83

Part 2: Are Miracles Possible? 83

P a r t 2 Are Miracles Possible?

I n both the early Christian period and the modern period, miracle claims have boasted significant detractors. For much of history, such detractors were sometimes critical of unfounded claims without ruling out the possibility of genuine supernatural activity. Since the argument of David Hume, however, much of modern academia has a priori ruled out claims of direct supernatural activity in the natural world.

Because many of the foundations of Hume's argument no longer fit our contemporary philosophic and scientific context, many scholars have begun to question the Humean paradigm. Many of Hume's contemporaries recognized the circularity of his foundational arguments even in his own day. In the next few chapters, I shall first introduce discussion about antisupernatural assumptions as an authenticity criterion in nt scholarship (ch. 4). I shall then trace briefly some of Hume's objections to miracles and counterobjections raised against his arguments, and briefly argue that his case provides an inadequate basis for a priori ruling out the possibility of supernatural activity (ch. 5). I shall then turn to some social and philosophic consequences of Hume's paradigm, as well as some further aspects of his argument (ch. 6).

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

People with an attenuated sense of what is possible will bring that conviction to the Bible and diminish it by the poverty of their own experience. —Walter Wink1

T his chapter provides a historical prolegomenon for the next two chapters, which question the dogmatic antisupernaturalism that most of modern academia has inherited from Hume and others. It is in those chapters that I will address in greater detail the antimiraculous approach that developed in the radical

Enlightenment. Here I survey instead especially some classical strands of thought on which some Enlightenment thinkers drew. I will then join other voices in emphasizing that we have frequently embraced antisupernaturalism as simply an automatic, unexamined assumption and will note that it, too, reflects a specific cultural setting.

While granting that most ancient historians included at least some claims of paranormal occurrences that they attributed to deities or intermediate beings, modern critics often use supernatural elements as a criterion for distinguishing what is genuinely historical in ancient histories from what is not.2 For example,

I have already noted that some twentieth-century Gospels critics excluded as legendary tales those stories that betrayed a significant miraculous element that could not be explained nonsupernaturally.3

Similarly, some earlier scholars, eager to underline the greater historicity of the later chapters of Acts where Luke himself was an eyewitness, sought to do so in part by emphasizing that angels and signs dominate the first part of Acts much

1. Wink, "Write," 6.

2. For nineteenthand mid-twentieth-century critics of some Celtic miracle traditions, see the summary in Gardner, "Miracles," 1927, 1932 (arguing against the critics).

3. See again Dibelius, Tradition, 70–103; Bultmann, Tradition, 227.

Are Miracles Possible?

more than the Pauline portions (excepting Acts 27:23), just as they appear rare in Paul's epistles.4 This simplistic method of counting pericopes neglects the shorter span of time covered by Acts' later chapters and the level of detail devoted to the defense speeches. Moreover, regardless of the number of verses involving them, signs remain central in Paul's later ministry, both in Acts (19:11–12; 28:6–9) and in his epistles (somewhat in the content of his teaching, 1 Cor 12–14; but especially in descriptions of his ministry, Rom 15:19; 2 Cor 12:12; cf. Gal 3:5).5

Luke devotes more space to describing visible signs of the Spirit's work than Paul's letters to churches do, but this hardly means that they were less significant in Paul's evangelistic ministry, an idea that contradicts his own explicit claims referenced above. The difference in space devoted to miracle accounts is largely a question of genre: the interests of narrative, which recounts events, versus occasional and usually corrective letters focused on current local issues.6

In both the Gospels and Acts, a major presupposition in the exclusion of reported events as nonhistorical has been the content criterion that genuine supernatural activity does not happen.7 While even in some of these cases a critic might wish to explain some occurrences as coincidence (hence to salvage the historical core of the events at the expense of their theology), one wonders why one must feel compelled to grant without argument the premise that miracles cannot happen. Because the above-noted critics simply took for granted that miracles do not happen, one might suppose that the philosophic constraints against them happening must be so firm as to be beyond debate. As we shall see in the next two chapters, however, this expectation proves unfounded. Because of weaknesses in the antimiracle argument, in fact, the possibility of miracles remains a live issue in the philosophy of religion today.

Because most of the primary protagonists in the Gospels and Acts were reputed as miracle workers, we should not be surprised about miracle claims in these works.

The presence of miracle claims should not then be used as a criterion of historical genre or even accuracy; historians writing about more recent miracle workers often recount the cures effected in the context of their activity without passing judgment on metaphysical questions others raise to explain those cures. Jesus was reputed as a miracle worker, and this was how many people experienced him.

4. Harnack, Acts, 148–49; Knox, Acts, 91–93. For some concerns about Harnack's theologically slanted historiographic approach more generally, see Keener, Historical Jesus, 5–6, and sources cited there.

5. Cf. here also Jewett, Romans, 911; Parsons, Luke, 126–27; Keener, Corinthians, 242; idem, "2

Corinthians," 822. For Paul on signs, cf. further Twelftree, "Signs"; idem, "Healing." Moreover, claims that signs diminish throughout Acts (or that a later portrait supplanted an earlier one; cf. Hickling, "Portrait in Acts 26") neglect the likelihood that Luke may have already successfully made his point about signs, hence need not reiterate it further; earlier, Luke emphasizes the Spirit on Jesus in Luke 3:22; 4:1, 14, 18, but no one claims that the Spirit declines on him later (Dollar, "Theology of Healing," 47).

6. Cf. Bovon, Theologian, 198–238, esp. 238. Paul emphasized the supernatural element of the entire

Christian life (cf. e.g., Rom 8:2–9; 2 Cor 3:17–18; Gal 5:16–23; Keener, "Perspectives").

7. As an example of this assumption, Wink, Transformation, 30–31, cites Morton Smith ("Method,"

12); see also examples in Kelly, "Miracle," 46–48.

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

But legitimate as this factual approach is in itself, it is also legitimate for historians to ask questions about causes of events. Historians and theologians may often punt those questions to each other when putative causes are divine, but the politics of academic specialization does not render the questions philosophically illegitimate. How do we interpret miracle or other paranormal claims? Are they all of one kind? Neither in antiquity nor in our day is there a consensus regarding these questions.

Ancient Skepticism toward Miracles Some ancient writers shared modern critics' concerns about undue interest in the paranormal, though not typically for exactly the same (radical Enlightenment) reasons.8 Some of their ideas, recovered in the West during the Renaissance, naturally contributed to discussions about miracles during the Enlightenment. One writer whose critique of traditional monotheistic religion sounds almost modern is the late second-century physician Galen. He denounced, among other contemporary positions, the views of "'Moses', according to which God is not bound by the orderly processes of nature"; Galen preferred "the rational choices of the God of nature," the true evidence of providence, to the irrational ideas of deities working contrary to the normal course of nature.9 Galen replaces traditional conceptions of deity with "nature" itself.10 Nevertheless, most writers in late antiquity, including

Christian writers, applied the phrase "contrary to nature" only to people contravening moral law11 or the norms of reason established by nature,12 not to miracles.

Although lacking sufficient knowledge of empirical science,13 some ancient writers came up with naturalistic alternatives for explaining natural phenomena that 8. I say "radical Enlightenment" to distinguish the perspective from some early Enlightenment thinkers more open to supernatural reports, at least those in Christian Scripture (see comment in ch. 5). Eighteenthcentury Enlightenment thinkers also sought a rational basis for morality, whereas current rationalism is mixed with relativistic assumptions incompatible with its earlier form. Much of this section is adapted from Keener, John, 261–63.

9. Grant, Miracle, 13.

10. Ibid., 13–14.

11. Ibid., 17; cf. Aristotle Pol. 1.2.3, 1253b (citing others); Porphyry Marc. 31.484; Philo Spec. Laws

3.39; Josephus Ag. Ap. 2.273, 275; Ps.-Phoc. 190–92; T. Naph. 3:4–5; Rom 1:26–27 (some of these examples would be equally, or perhaps even more, relevant in the next footnote). Nevertheless, it could also apply to what was simply different from the normal course of nature (e.g., Soranus Gynec. 1.12.43;

Rom 11:24; perhaps Artemidorus Onir. 1.80).

12. See, e.g., Diogenes the Cynic (according to Diogenes Laertius 6.2.65); Aeschines Tim. 185; Seneca

Ep. Lucil. 66.37–39; Musonius Rufus 12, p. 86.8–10; Dio Chrysostom Or. 33.52, 60; Arius Didymus

2.7.6a, p. 38.12–14; 2.7.7e, p. 48.1–2, 11–13; 2.7.7f, p. 48.14–15; 2.7.8a, p. 52.25–26; 2.7.10a, p. 56.1–3,

23–25; 58.2–5; 2.7.10e, p. 62.13–16; Iamblichus V.P. 30.186; perhaps Diodorus Siculus 32.10.6. But some things could be "against nature" yet prove morally indifferent (Arius Didymus 2.7.7a, p. 42.31–44.7). See appendix D.

13. If unrestrained, winds would blow away the universe (Virgil Aen. 1.58); Helen was carried to Egypt by winds (Philostratus Hrk. 25.10); winds carry along the sun and moon chariots (1 En. 72:2, 5); winds hold up the heavens (1 En. 18:2–5; Jos. Asen. 12:2/12:3).

Are Miracles Possible?

differed from traditional religious explanations offered by most of their polytheistic contemporaries. Thus, for example, while some viewed the winds as divine14 and others presented them as under divine or angelic authority,15 still others viewed them as purely natural phenomena.16 Likewise, some thought that violent winds created thunder and lightning;17 others, that wind is air flowing in a single direction.18 Of course, many such explanations among ancients could prove accurate only to a very limited degree from the perspective of modern knowledge, and sometimes not at all: for example, the views that the planets and stars cause rain,19 that the fire from stars falling into clouds causes lightning storms,20 or that wind can be caused by the stars moving in a direction opposite to that of the earth.21 The guesses were not all equally correct, but they were authentic attempts at purely or largely naturalistic explanations.

Yet skepticism applied not only to supernatural interpretations of what we would readily describe as natural phenomena today; it often applied to claims of paranormal phenomena. Such skepticism appears both among characters in fiction and in historical writing. Ovid makes some of his characters more believable by having them doubt the supernatural, while others affirm that deities can do anything22—before they are all changed into bats for disbelieving in Bacchus!23

Unlike most authors, Hermippus suspected that the magical sage Pythagoras was a phony.24 One Diognetus taught Marcus Aurelius not to believe miracle workers, magicians, and exorcists.25 Pliny the Elder emphasized that the wisest people rejected the efficacy of incantations, though he complained that mostly everyone else accepted them.26 Cicero, though a member of "the priestly college of augurs" (presumably for political reasons), regarded such practices as supersti14. Fronto in Naber, p. 211, section 7; personified, at least, in Plutarch Bride 12, Mor. 139DE.

15. E.g., Valerius Flaccus 8.322–27; 1 En. 4:3; Tg. Jon. on 1 Kgs 19:11–12; probably angels in Apoc.

Mos. 38:3.

16. See Seneca Nat. 5.16.1–5.17.2; for ancient "scientific" theories on weather, see Pliny Nat.

2.39.105–6.

17. Pliny Nat. 2.38.104.

18. Seneca Nat. Q. 5.1.1; Pliny Nat. 2.44.114.

19. Pliny Nat. 2.39.105–6 (by contrast, Pliny offers a much more accurate explanation in 2.42.111).

20. Ibid., 2.43.112.

21. Ibid., 2.45.116; cf. Pliny Nat. 2.6.32–33, where the planets move in a direction opposite the world.

More plausibly, gusts from the earth, solar heat, and irregularities in the mountains also produce them

(2.44.114–15).

22. Ovid Metam. 4.272–73.

23. Ibid., 4.402–415. Elsewhere when recounting something incredible (ghosts terrorizing Rome,

Ovid Fast. 2.551–54), he notes that he can hardly believe it himself (Fast. 2.551).

24. Diogenes Laertius 8.1.41.

25. Marcus Aurelius 1.5. The Loeb note (LCL 4–5n6, citing Dig. 50.13.1, §3; Justin Apol. 2.6; Tertullian

Apol. 23; Irenaeus Haer. 2.6, §2; Lactantius 5.21) may be correct that the exorcism comment applied especially to Christians, but Philostratus and third-century magical papyri suggest that it need hardly have applied to them alone.

26. Pliny Nat. 28.3.10. Yet he feels constrained to respect ancestral practice (28.3.12–13) and leaves such matters open to his audience to decide (28.5.29).

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

tious, although probably only a small minority of people shared his skepticism.27

Even Philostratus, who writes about Apollonius and probably the divinized hero Protesilaos, accommodates some of the skepticism of his day, perhaps to refute his alleged associations with magic.28

Various writers satirized gullibility. Petronius, for example, satirizes gullibility as the low-class merchant Trimalchio believes a werewolf story.29 At greater length,

Lucian recounts a person persuaded of unbelievable reports because he regards the source as believable,30 whereas a more reliable character elsewhere proves more skeptical of myths.31 Lucian happily parodies poets and writers known for their tall tales (True Story 1.2–4). Most relevant, he reports that he himself embellished stories of Peregrinus's death with fabulous claims to have fun at the expense of his unlearned hearers, discovering that some not only believed his report but also went out claiming to have witnessed the very phenomena that he had just fabricated (Peregr. 39–40). Similarly, Lucian approves of a historian reporting potential myths, so long as one does not affirm them but leaves their veracity to the audience to decide (Hist. 60).32 The most thoroughgoing critique of including paranormal events in histories, however, comes from the critical historian Polybius.

Polybius's Critique of Sensationalist Historians Polybius complained about historians who focused too much on prodigies

(τερατεία) and used tragic coloring (7.7.1).33 Some reports of signs do serve such

27. Klauck, Context, 180, citing Cicero Div. 2.83. Loos, Miracles, 7, cites Cicero's skepticism of miracles in Div. 2.28.

28. Theissen, Miracle Stories, 284–85. Like a good sophist, Philostratus sometimes provides rationalistic explanations (Maclean and Aitken, Heroikos, l–li, citing Hrk. 48.11–13; 50.1, 7–11; cf. also lxiv on Dio

Chrysostom Troikos 11, 54, 70); cf. Hrk. 33.6; restrained language in 4.2; sympathy for skeptics in 51.11; distinction between eyewitness testimony and hearsay, rendering the former more credible (8.8); and the progressive persuasion of the open-minded skeptic in 3.1; 7.9, 11; 8.2, 8; the skeptic believed as a child (7.10).

29. Petronius Sat. 62–63. Cf. the silly story in Apuleius Metam. 2.28.

30. Lucian Lover of Lies 15, 32; an unreliable character attests the de-haunting of a house in 29–32.

Others later employed this narrative approach in which a skeptical character is won over (Philostratus

Hrk. 7.9, 11; 8.2).

31. Lucian Dial. D. 446–447 (9/28, Menippus and Tiresias 2–3).

32. Others followed this practice, e.g., Pliny Nat. 28.5.29.

33. Polybius also objects to historians who create such implausible obstacles that they require a deus ex machina, as in the tragic dramatists, to nevertheless yield the known historical outcome (3.48.7–8), inventing divine apparitions (3.48.9) not found in their sources. Cf. also George, "Miracles," 103. In view of the existence of such writers, Plümacher contends that Luke follows this sensational form of historiography, with the goal of stimulating readers' pleasure and passion; it was a recognized form of history but one that, while interested in what happened, was not interested in that alone (Plümacher, "TERATEIA"; cf. idem,

Geschichte, 33–84). Yet Plümacher's "tragic-pathetic historiography" neither fits Luke nor functions well as an ancient category; although tragic elements predominate more in some historians than others, there was no specific "school" of tragic historiography (see Rutherford, "Tragedy," 513–14, following Walbank,

"Tragedy" = Papers, 241; Hornblower, "Introduction," 44). Because of his signs reports Dormeyer, "Historii," sees Luke as closer to Israelite than Greek historiography (though marvels could appear in both, Dormeyer is probably correct about Luke using lxx models).

Are Miracles Possible?

functions.34 But again Luke and the other Gospel writers focus on miracles because they tell about a miracle worker, not because they resemble the sensationalist works

Polybius critiques, which typically contain elaborate scenes of pathos.35

Polybius's complaint about historians who focus on unusual phenomena is part of his longer complaint about those who elaborate such a narrow range of events that they must exaggerate and focus on irrelevancies rather than elucidate the behavior of important characters (7.7.1–8). This is partly Polybius's way of distinguishing and marking the superiority of his work, which covers a broader span of history and geography, from others. That Thucydides covers a narrower span than Polybius yet was a careful historian may escape Polybius's notice, but Thucydides also eschews the fantastic.

Like Polybius, some other elite historians (such as Thucydides and often Tacitus) proved skeptical of signs. Thucydides, in fact, promises to include fewer accounts

"of the fabulous" than did earlier poets who focused on pleasant-sounding myths; he preferred, he claimed, to deal with probable events, namely, the sorts of events that are historically repeatable (Thucydides 1.22.4, LCL).36 One orator opines that poets could use mythical language because they wrote about the gods, but historians, who wrote about people, must keep close to their sources (Menander

Rhetor 1.1.333.31–1.334.5). Pliny apparently believed that stories of marvels would sell better than his dry research treatise could (Nat. pref. 12–13).

Signs in Critical Historians Surely, however, not all the historians whom Polybius characterizes as sensationalist would have agreed with his description. Historians did not need to resort to wholesale antisupernaturalism to exercise critical judgment. By the imperial period, historians often included "miraculous and fantastic elements,"37 and not every writer who included paranormal events was generally "sensationalist." Whereas Lucian and Polybius are skeptical, many Greek and Roman historians reported curiosities in their sources, ambivalent "between skepticism and credulity."38 Others allowed

34. For example, Valerius Maximus reports many miracula, simply as collections of unusual phenomena

(Valerius Maximus 1.8.praef.; 1.8.1–2; 1.8.ext.1–19); he justifies one report as believable simply because it appears in his sources (Valerius Maximus 1.8.7). The dangers of magic also added intrigue to novels; e.g., Heliodorus Aeth. 6.14.

35. One may contrast the concise depiction of Jesus's crucifixion with the elaboration of gore in sensationalist and some other ancient historians (cf. Goguel, Life, 527).

36. Thucydides admitted that some earlier descriptions of hardships and natural disasters, dependent on oral tradition, had been rendered credible by the more recent events he was describing (1.23.3), but part of his agenda is to render his own account unique. Thucydides offered an effective model of restraint to many of his successors (see Remus, Conflict, 36–37).

37. Krasser, "Reading," 554 (citing Livy, Appian, Plutarch, and others).

38. Hemer, Acts in History, 428–29; more fully, 428–43. Sophists employed "rationalistic explanations" where possible (Maclean and Aitken, Heroikos, l, lxiv); also of astrological phenomena like eclipses

(Philostratus Hrk. 33.5–6; see comment on Acts 2:20 in Keener, Acts). See, e.g., Tacitus Germ. 3. Some phenomena could be attributed to coincidence, though with divine involvement in the timing (Remus,

Conflict, 45–47).

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

both natural and divine factors side by side.39 Thus, for example, Herodotus, while not speaking of regular intervention by deities, views their activity as part of the natural order about which he writes.40

Livy is among the writers after Polybius who chronicles reports of unusual events

(prodigies) for each year;41 some of these we would regard as natural phenomena and others as originally fabricated, but they undoubtedly stemmed from Livy's sources.42 Livy himself often warns, however, that many of the reported prodigies may have been accepted too readily by their contemporaries;43 the more that such reports were believed, he opines, the more that further reports of this nature were generated.44

Still more reliable historians also provide reports of such phenomena, such as of signs attesting Vespasian in Tacitus and Suetonius45 or signs surrounding

Jerusalem's fall,46 though they may do so with sufficient distancing as to retain the appearance of objectivity.47 Sometimes reports even from an immediately preceding generation involve events about which more of us today would be skeptical than ancient critics were; Tacitus avers that a dignified historian ought not "to collect fabulous tales" merely to "delight" his readers, but warns that he "cannot

39. Remus, Conflict, 42–44; cf. 45–47. Koskenniemi, Miracle-Workers, 297, appears correct that the skeptics constituted a minority and that people of most social backgrounds enjoyed accounts of wonders.

40. Herodotus speaks of gods, but not of them intervening regularly in the narrative as "in Homer and the Attic drama" (McDonald, "Herodotus," 86); although Luke reports much divine activity, God appears directly only very rarely, as in Luke 3:22; 9:35 (though the risen Jesus appears in Acts). For Herodotus, divine powers are viewed differently among different peoples; he does not treat divine intervention "in anthropomorphic terms" (ibid., 86). Herodotus views both divine and human activity as within the natural order (ibid., 88–89); where he reports traditions of miracles, "he regularly indicates his reservations" (87), unlike Luke. Meanwhile, Xenophon is unapologetic in his belief in gods and their activity

(Brown, Historians, 97).

41. Among other writers, see, e.g., Valerius Maximus 1.6.5; Appian Bell. civ. 1.9.83; 2.5.36; 2.10.68;

4.1.4; for other prodigies, see Cicero Verr. 2.4.49.108; Pliny Nat. 17.38.241–45; Tacitus Ann. 12.43, 64;

14.32; 15.22, 47; 16.13; Suetonius Jul. 81.3; Aulus Gellius 4.6.2; Arrian Alex. 4.15.7–8. In exaggerated, fictitious form, Lucan Bell. civ. 1.529–63 passim; Phaedrus 3.3.4–5. See further discussion in Keener,

Matthew, 568–69.

42. E.g., Livy 21.62.1–5; 24.10.6–11; 24.44.8; 25.7.7–9; 26.23.4–5; 27.4.11–14; 27.11.2–5; 27.37.1–6;

29.14.2; 32.1.10–12; 32.8.2; 33.26.7–8; 34.45.6–7; 35.9.2–4; 35.21.3–6; 36.37.2–3; 40.45.1–4; 41.13.1–2;

41.21.12–13; 42.2.4–5; 43.13.3–6; 45.16.5. Justifying Livy's supernaturalism, see Laistner, Historians, 69

(though what he attributes to possible Stoic thought on 69–77 could simply reflect popular religion).

43. So Livy 21.62.1.

44. Livy 24.10.6.

45. Tacitus Hist. 4.81; Suetonius Vesp. 7.2–3. Cf. also Vespasian's vision in Tacitus Hist. 4.82; modern scholars usually suspect that such stories originated as imperial propaganda (cf., e.g., Clark, "Religions,"

62) but do not for that reason disqualify Tacitus as a critical ancient historian by ancient standards. Nor would patronage claims affect Tacitus's objectivity here, since he wrote after the Flavian dynasty's demise.

Tacitus has the physicians offer naturalistic explanations for the healings (emphasized by Johnson, Hume,

85–86), but these explanations seem to me difficult, especially in the case of the blind man.

46. Tacitus Hist. 5.13, probably following Josephus War 6.288–310. On signs surrounding Jerusalem's fall, see fuller discussion in Keener, Matthew, 584.

47. Thus Tacitus's account in Hist. 4.81 is somewhat naturalistic, and both here and especially in Suetonius Vesp. 7.3 Vespasian is convinced only against his own expectations.

Are Miracles Possible?

. . . dare to deny the truth of common tradition."48 Other sources strongly suggest that Tacitus personally believed at least in the gods and in sacrificing to them.49

While Diodorus Siculus accepts some major supernatural feats, he often prefers nonsupernatural accounts and "demythologizes" them, depicting how he thinks such accounts were reworked into mythical ones.50 Eunapius recounts a barely believable event only with hesitation, noting that none of the supposed eyewitnesses had written anything down.51 Although Arrian accepted the possibility of divine interventions,52 he was not extremely gullible; he complains that some writers tell of various wonders at the ends of the earth (ants that mine gold for the Indians, and water monsters and griffins also in India) only because they can get away with inventing entertaining stories about matters that their readers cannot check.53 Plutarch accepted some reports but could also exercise critical discretion and could reject a tale as incredible.54 Plutarch cautiously reports various views about the activities of statues, noting the frequency of the reports (Plutarch Cam.

6.1–4) and concluding that one should avoid either believing too much (superstition) or disbelieving too much (irreligion; Cam. 6.4).55

Many historians sometimes qualified reports with "it is said" or similar cautionary devices.56 Reporting wonders in their sources freely, they nevertheless distanced themselves from seeming too credulous by warning readers to evaluate

48. Tacitus Hist. 2.50 (LCL 1:243), reporting as an omen a bird that could not be scared from a grove until the moment of Otho's death. Tacitus Ann. 15.7–8 treats as foolish those who ignore omens.

49. See Pliny Ep. 9.10.1, where Tacitus has urged Pliny to sacrifice to Diana as well as Minerva (and Pliny replies that he has not enough boars). Tacitus's suggestion could be facetious, but probably rests on a genuine belief. Certainly he believes in prodigies and portents (Tacitus Hist. 1.86; on the same ruler, cf. Suetonius Otho 8.3).

50. E.g., Diodorus Siculus 4.47.3–4; cf. Plutarch Alex. 35.5–6.

51. Eunapius Lives 460 (the alleged event occurred two generations earlier, with but one oral link).

52. Alex. 5.1.2.

53. Arrian Alex. 5.4.3.

54. Plutarch Isis 8, Mor. 353F. After narrating some extraordinary events related to an oracle several centuries earlier (Plutarch Cam. 5.4), he admits that this may sound "mythical" (Cam. 5.5). For other paranormal phenomena in Plutarch, see, e.g., Sulla 27.2 (a creature taken as a satyr); for his suspicions of or lack of commitment to some reports, see also, e.g., Alex. 35.5–6; some different examples in George,

"Miracles," 103. Mackay, "Plutarch," 108–9, holds that Plutarch could have accepted most of the miracle stories in the nt except the resurrection and incarnation (though he would have found Christianity's particularity problematic).

55. Aristotle's principle of the mean served Plutarch in this case. Most understood then, as we do today, that statues were inactive (e.g., Diogenes Ep. 11), but many made exceptions for unusual phenomena (I list a few of the references in Keener, Revelation, 351–52, 362; cf. Rev 13:15). For statues speaking, see, e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. rom. 8.56.2 (in Aune, Revelation, 762); Valerius Maximus 1.8.3–4;

Plutarch Cam. 6.1; for Memnon's statue, see Callistratus Descr. 9; Philostratus Hrk. 26.16; weeping, Livy

43.13.4; Lucan Bell. civ. 1.556–57; turning, Plutarch Cam. 6.3 (Aune, Revelation, 762, cites Dio Cassius

41.61; 54.7); bleeding, Livy 27.4.14; Appian Bell. civ. 4.1.4; or Caesar Bell. civ. 3.105; Appian Bell. civ.

2.5.36; 4.1.4; Plutarch Cam. 6.3; Philostratus Hrk. 19.4. Hair growing on a statue was also considered unusual, hence functioned as an omen (Livy 32.1.10).

56. Witherington, Acts, 221–22 (citing Josephus Ant. 1.108). Cf. similarly Ovid Fast. 2.551. Cf. even one novel's nods to objectivity (e.g., τι in Philostratus Hrk. 4.2; the selective claims of 8.8; Philostratus

Vit. Apoll. 4.45).

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

the veracity of such reports for themselves.57 Yet despite a higher level of skepticism fashionable among the intelligentsia than among many others, ancient historians were not products of the radical Enlightenment. They could not simply expect all readers to disbelieve all claims of superhuman activity without argument.

Although these observations suggest that the most careful historians by other standards were sometimes the least credulous, we should note that the differences also usually correspond to the expectations of the audiences for which they wrote, the epistemological presuppositions of which are not guarantors of effective historical research per se. The majority of ancient historians were critical of some reports while accepting the possibility of others; that is, they did not a priori decide all claims of paranormal events to be either authentic or inauthentic. We do not for that reason reject their authenticity as historians or the authenticity of the other reports they offer.58

Early Christians, as followers of a miracle worker, members of a charismatic movement, and usually not members of the Greco-Roman elite, were more open to miracle claims than were most elite historians. On what grounds do we need to suppose that this difference necessarily makes their approach inferior to that of their elite contemporaries or reduces its historical content?59 Whatever one's response to such questions (normally based on our own philosophic assumptions), we should note that the presence of paranormal claims does not necessarily alter a work's genre—such reports do appear in many ancient historians.60 The Gospels and Acts typically include them in much greater proportion because of their subject matter—that is, people whom scholars usually recognize as miracle workers.

Ancient Plausibility Structures Certainly not all ancient intellectuals were skeptical of supernatural phenomena. Thus, for example, Stoics, despite their disdain for immoral mythology, were known for defending the gods and divination.61 Likewise, thinkers influenced by the Pythagorean tradition clearly affirmed tangible, divine supernatural activity.62

57. E.g., Pliny Nat. 28.5.29; Aune, Environment, 134 (citing Herodotus 2.123; 5.45; Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. rom. 1.48.1); cf. Pausanias 1.26.6 (on a statue that supposedly fell from heaven).

58. Likewise, we do not always reject their information if we disagree with their inaccurate skepticism about it (cf. the example in Flew, "Arguments," 51, though cited for a different point).

59. Those who feel that critical historians should exclude paranormal claims can simply purge the materials that historians they regard as less critical have retained; thus, if we account for their focus on miracle workers, the populist Gospels and Acts (on this view) would be no poorer sources than were the primary sources that ancient critical historians sometimes purged for us. In works such as Mark, however, one would be purging a significant proportion of the narrative.

60. While Plümacher (noted above) does not rank Luke among "sensationalist" historians lightly, critical historians were not all averse to signs; Luke records more because he writes about miracle workers and follows an Israelite and Jewish rather than sensationalist Hellenistic tradition. Moreover, an emphasis on signs in such works need not lead to a particular assignment of genre, and certainly not to all the particulars often associated with it.

61. Cicero Nat. d. 2.4; Lucian, Z. Rants 4, 40; Klauck, Context, 181. They salvaged myths by allegorizing them; see Cornutus Nat. d. §19 (33.14 Lang) (in Grant, Religions, 78–79); Cicero Nat. d. 2.28.70.

62. See the discussion of Apollonius above.

Are Miracles Possible?

As noted above, Hellenistic histories often included portents as signs of divine action, just as did the Gospels and Acts (the latter work usually recognized today as a Hellenistic history).63 Extranormal events could be viewed as the occasional activity of divine persons or heroes and hence no less plausible and distinctive than the activities of mortals. Arrian notes that the early stories about Dionysus are difficult to believe, but that what would normally be improbable cannot be dismissed when one is dealing with a divine element.64

These writers normally employed signs not simply to entertain their readers "but as illustrations of divine guidance."65 We might choose to dispute the veracity of some or many of their reports, but if we do so, this dispute would not suggest that they simply invented the reports rather than derived them from sources they took seriously. While some historians were more inventive than others, we would not, for example, suspect Tacitus or Suetonius of having merely invented the reports of the signs attributed to Vespasian, whatever their historical origin.66

This principle should also hold true for early Christian reports. Celsus and other later critics of Christians sought not to deny their miracles but to challenge the value of these phenomena by questioning their source (sorcery) or the social status of Christians.67 Lucian was more skeptical, accusing Christians of "believing" without evidence and thus being easily exploited financially by charlatans.68

Nevertheless, his account also thereby appears to confirm other sources' reports that Christians were associated with and did not invent for their own literary purposes claims of such extranormal phenomena.69 We may likewise dispute the varying interpretations ancient historians (who similarly did not all agree with one another) attached to reports of supernatural phenomena without disputing their dependence on prior information. Again, the same principle may be applied to the Gospels and Acts.

In contrast to some elite Hellenistic historians, early Jewish sources not composed for Greek intellectual consumption usually show no reticence about 63. See Laistner, Historians, 7, 69; especially Squires, Plan, 78–84; further, 89–101 for Luke-Acts and 78–89 for other historians. One may also note examples, e.g., of judgments for desecrating temples or sacred objects, as in Polybius 31.9.1–4; 32.15.3–14; Corn. Nep. 17 (Agesilaus), 4.8; Valerius Maximus 1.1. ext. 5; 1.1.18, 21; 1.1.ext. 3 (posthumously); 1.1.ext. 5; Pliny Nat. 33.24.83; Appian Hist. rom. 3.12.1–2;

Babrius 78; Phaedrus 4.11.1–13; Lucian Z. Rants 24, 32; Pausanias 3.23.3–5; 9.25.10; 9.33.6; 9.39.12;

Diodorus Siculus 14.63.1; 16.58.6; 27.4.3; 28.3.1; Athenaeus Deipn. 12.523ab; cf. 1 Sam 5:4; Strabo

17.1.43. Contrast Lucian Tim. 4. Among Jews, 2 Macc 3:25–26; Josephus Ant. 12.358–59; cf. 4 Macc 18:5.

64. Arrian Alex. 5.1.2. Cf. some philosophers who pointed out that all things were possible for the gods (Iamblichus V.P. 28.139, 148; cf. Luke 1:37). Sallust Bell. cat. 3.2, fears that some will dismiss his accounts because they report characters nobler than those the reader would expect.

65. Squires, Plan, 102.

66. Tacitus Hist. 4.81; Suetonius Vesp. 7.2–3. See discussion in the relevant note above.

67. Cook, Interpretation, 39; Hemer, Acts in History, 428–29.

68. Lucian Peregr. 13.

69. In Peregr. 11, Peregrinus learned the "marvel-wisdom" (θαυμαστὴν σοφίαν) of the Christians, possibly wisdom related to signs working (cf. lxx Exod 15:11; 34:10; Josh 3:5; Mic 7:15; Tob 12:22; Wis

19:8). He noted that some after Peregrinus's death would probably attribute miracles to his spirit (Peregr.

28, perhaps influenced by Christian healing in Jesus's name).

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

reporting wonders.70 (Popular second-century Christian accounts and later rabbinic accounts depict spectacular miracles even more lavishly.71) Josephus, writing for a more Hellenistic audience, sometimes follows the cautious conventions of his Greek contemporaries, adding a noncommittal remark after reporting biblical miracles.72 He plays down Elijah's miracles73 and some other miracles.74 Nevertheless,

Josephus did believe in miracles and wanted his audience to do the same.75 He also used portents as a kind of "signs" (σημεῖα).76 It appears that Josephus, like some

Greek and Roman historians (as well as more than a few modern nt scholars), approved of belief in some extranormal phenomena but mostly acceded to the conventions long established for the historical genre in writing about them.77

One of the Gospel writers was also a Hellenistic historian, yet shares the same essentially Jewish theological frame of reference held by the other Gospel writers.78

Luke, who writes for Christians who believe in a powerful and historically active deity, is not at all reticent to report miracles. He is, however, sensitive enough to some critics' skepticism that he distinguishes his own claims for Jesus's resurrection from more incredible popular stories by citing "proofs" (Acts 1:3) and acknowledging that some find this claim unbelievable (Acts 26:8).79 Likewise,

70. E.g., 4Q422, 10 5 (Moses); 4Q176 1–2 I, 1 (eschatological); wonders in 1 En. 24:4–25:6; 27:1–4;

Let. Aris. 99; throughout the lxx. For a survey of healing theology among ot writers and their ancient

Near Eastern contexts, see Brown, Healer, passim.

71. For apocryphal collections of "acts" as almost aretalogies, see Aune, Environment, 147.

72. E.g., Ant. 1.108; 2.348; 3.81, 322; 4.158. Aune, Environment, 109; Squires, Plan, 84–89; Betz,

"Miracles in Josephus," 212–13, who also notes that he limited them mostly to the past (218). He follows

Greek historiographic convention (Aune, Environment, 134, cites Lucian Hist. 60; Herodotus 2.123; 5.45;

Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. rom. 1.48.1).

73. Feldman, "Elijah."

74. Feldman, "Hellenizations," 150.

75. Betz, "Miracles in Josephus," 212–13; Eve, Miracles, 52. Koskenniemi, Miracle-Workers, 228–30, notes that most scholars (and esp. Feldman) see Josephus as reserved about miracles, with some viewing him as ambivalent; but Koskenniemi also observes (295) that Josephus rarely omits and sometimes even exaggerates miracles. Betz thinks Josephus did not expect them in the present ("Miracles in Josephus," 218); if Betz is right on this caveat, Josephus must have excepted prophecy (for others, War 1.78–80; 2.159; for himself, Isaacs, Spirit, 48; Hill, Prophecy, 26–27, on War 3.351–54; see also Joshua ben Hananiah in War

6.300–309; Noack, Jesus Ananiassøn; Gray, Figures, 158–63).

76. Betz, "Miracles in Josephus," 231–33. For this language for portents, see also Plutarch Dem. 19.1;

Philostratus Hrk. 16.5; 17.4; 18.2; 31.5.

77. Greek influence may have contributed to Josephus's rationalizing, but the Jewish belief in miracles reflecting God's power contributed the more dominant influence (MacRae, "Miracle," 142).

78. On Luke as a Hellenistic historian, see discussion in, e.g., Palmer, "Monograph" (1993); Plümacher,

"Luke as Historian," 398; idem, Geschichte, 1–32; idem, "Monographie"; Keener, Historical Jesus, ch. 6; idem, Acts; on theology in historiography, see, e.g., Squires, "Plan," 15–77; Keener, Historical Jesus, 121–23.

79. Luke is also restrained in an eyewitness report (Acts 20:12). Moule, "Classification," 242, thinks that "Luke has a sort of rationalization (though demonstrably misconceived)," in Luke 23:45, because he attributes the cosmic darkness at Jesus's crucifixion (Mark 15:33) to an "eclipse" (BDAG there has

"cease to shine" but notes that "Luke's diction is standard for description of an eclipse," citing Thucydides

2.28; 7.50.4; Xenophon Hell. 1.6.1; FrGrH 239 B 16; Plutarch Pel. 31.3; Sir 17:31; Philo Mos. 2.271).

Nevertheless, well-timed eclipses were hardly explained only naturalistically. While some construed them in this manner (see Polybius 9.19.1; Valerius Maximus 8.11.ext.1; Seneca Nat. Q. 7.1.2; Heracl.

Hom. Prob. 57.6; Philostratus Hrk. 33.6; cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.1.145–46; 10.96; Pliny Nat. 2.6.47; Dio

Are Miracles Possible?

Luke does not seek to report all sorts of wonders and prodigies; his focus is signs

(σημεῖα)—"signs, that is to say, of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God (cf.

Luke 11:20)."80 Luke's story focuses on miracle workers along the lines of Elijah and Elisha; he also writes for a community that, in contrast to some readers of elite histories, already believed that Luke's protagonists performed signs. Luke thus diverges from the norm of elite histories by reporting miracles more lavishly than they did.

Nevertheless, to link these miracles with a wider range of exotic reports in sensationalist historiography, and then to further attribute all the wider traits of that historiographic category to Luke's work, collapses too many categories.81 It is the subject of Luke's history rather than elaborate rhetorical license that drives his accounts of signs; as we have noted, Paul's letters indicate that he anticipated signs even more widely than Luke claims them for him (Rom 15:19; 2 Cor 12:12).

Many ancient thinkers' determination to exercise critical judgment in particular cases, whether their conclusions were usually right or wrong, contrasts with the few ancient thinkers and many modern ones who a priori reject supernatural phenomena wholesale.82 It also contrasts with some modern readers' skepticism that eyewitnesses or sources ultimately dependent on them can offer miracle claims. To observe this difference is not to affirm all the views held by many ancient thinkers, but to put modern skepticism in a larger historical context as one worldview among many.

Modern Western Skepticism toward Supernatural Phenomena Modern scholars sometimes treat wonders as fictitious elements in ancient historiography, including in the Gospels and Acts.83 We should recognize, however, that ancients with different plausibility paradigms may well have experienced genuine events that many modern Western interpreters would attribute to different causes.

Moreover, and more to the point in this particular section, modern Western interpreters who are skeptical of all such events or read all of them through a Cassius R.H. 60.26.1–5; Livy 44.37.6–7), many others construed them as omens (see, e.g., tos. Suk. 2:5–6;

Aristophanes Peace 414; Xenophon Hell. 1.6.1; Thucydides 2.28.1; Polybius 29.16.1–3; Diodorus Siculus

20.5.5; Philostratus Vit. Apoll. 4.43; 8.23; much fuller comment on Acts 2:20 in Keener, Acts).

80. Bruce, Acts, 31.

81. Luke-Acts cannot readily fit the category of tragic-pathetic historiography (see ch. 4 in the introduction to Keener, Acts). The composite alleged category is in any case questionable (see Rutherford,

"Tragedy," 513–14, following Walbank, "Tragedy" = Papers, 241; Hornblower, "Introduction," 44).

82. E.g., Philo accepts both natural laws and biblical testimony to miracles (Wolfson, Philo 1:347–56).

A later Neoplatonist, albeit one given to credulity, charges that thoroughgoing skepticism itself reflected unproved presuppositions: since the gods are powerful, it is imprudent to dismiss marvelous claims where deities might be involved (Iamblichus V.P. 28.148; cf. 28.139).

83. E.g., Plümacher, Geschichte, 33–84, on Acts; similarly, regarding the earlier Elijah cycle, Gordon,

Near East, 222. From a literary approach, see Aichele, "Fantasy" (comparing parabolic structure on 54; but the structure seems conventional for narratives more generally).

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

purely naturalistic paradigm are hardly neutral in their assumptions. As I shall emphasize in the next two chapters, antisupernaturalism emerged from specific historical circumstances no less than ancient or modern, Western or non-Western supernaturalist approaches. This observation need not suggest that antisupernaturalism must therefore be logically wrong; it may suggest that we need not assume it as an a priori.84

No less important for readers of the text, from a literary standpoint, we must beware of simply assuming modern antisupernaturalism's unsympathetic reading of ancient texts, which diverges starkly from how the first audiences would have heard them.85 It is a bias that can hinder us from entering their narrative worlds as fully as their first audiences could. On the level of philosophic methodology, to start from a "guilty until proven innocent" skepticism toward claims in historical narratives reflects what logicians would normally view as the "poisoning the well" fallacy. "In the history of philosophy," a critic observes, "it represents Descartes' approach to epistemology, and that is a blind alley."86

Thus I will here briefly introduce and raise questions concerning the historic context of modern Western philosophic assumptions regarding supernatural phenomena, a context that I will address more thoroughly in the following two chapters. I will deal in later chapters with miracle claims in the modern world and some of their varied interpretations in the Majority World and in the West. A purely naturalistic paradigm that a priori excludes the possibility of divine causation is not the only interpretative approach to reality held by intelligent people in all cultures, nor is it self-evident to observers in all cultures.

Our Cultural Limitations In chapter 7, I will include some severe Majority World critiques of traditional

Western antisupernaturalism. Here I simply introduce the question of the cultural limitations of some of our philosophic presuppositions. Assumptions about reality are often culturally formed, and events that function as "reality" by the criteria of one culture can shape its history even if these assumptions are foreign to other cultures.87

84. The history of ideas, including in scientific paradigms (cf. Kuhn, Structure), shows that the same data may be interpreted through diverse interpretive grids after paradigm shifts; interpretive models often control our perspectives on what is possible.

85. Cf. Keener, "Comparisons." Likewise, Wink, "Write," 6, notes that scholars whose background is either "rationalistic, scholastic religion" or a rigid dogmatism will not easily "enter empathetically into the spontaneity and boundary-shattering milieu of the early church." In Transformation, 2, Wink also warns that biblical scholarship often ignores what the authors themselves cared about. On the need to read documents sympathetically to appreciate their message, see Vermes, Jesus and Judaism, 63.

86. Padgett, "Advice," 296.

87. See Achtemeier, Miracle Tradition, 137, and the sources he notes. Remus, Healer, 112–13, observes

(citing one anthropological study) that traditional healers can be effective if a society believes in them even if the healers are skeptical themselves. One might naturally expect a healer's confidence to, if anything, augment this effect.

Are Miracles Possible?

Noted historian of Greco-Roman antiquity Ramsay MacMullen warns that history proper does not pass judgment on whether ancients believed rightly or wrongly about their miracle claims; history proper simply describes those beliefs.

"To doubt their account of what they saw—to doubt that [the West African prophet

William Wadé] Harris, or any saint, or Jesus himself truly suspended the laws of nature—could only be theology, good or bad. To doubt that Asclepius worked miracles back then would likewise be theology."88

Scholars today sometimes emphasize the importance of cultural sensitivity to the differences between ancient and modern medicine for avoiding ethnocentric evaluations of ancient perspectives.89 Likewise, scholars note that taking into account the differences between our modern Western critical perceptions about miracles and those of the first century can help broaden our understanding of what appears "realistic" in a given epistemic framework.90 I shall address numerous examples of a different cultural and philosophic understanding in later chapters.

Ancient historians' perceptions of the paranormal events they reported is a different question from the perceptions of modern historiography, but one that is legitimate to ask. If some people are tempted to despise ancient Mediterranean historiography as significantly inferior to our own derivative genre simply because it defines its task differently than we do, we should consider our own philosophic and existential horizons: aside from the susceptibility of such a methodological bias to some scholars' postmodern critique,91 this skeptical approach seems historically naive when elevated without argument from a working assumption to an ontological affirmation.

It is difficult for those working from a Western Enlightenment paradigm to appreciate ancient claims of paranormal events, and all the more so when such claims are attributed to supernatural causation. Yet if we are to read the Gospels and Acts sympathetically, entering imaginatively into their narrative world and understanding the presuppositions that these writers shared with their ideal audience, it will help us to find other models for reading their texts than the modern radical Enlightenment paradigm.92

88. MacMullen, Christianizing, 24. Likewise, some sociologists of religion contend that sociologists can report their subjects' miracle claims but cannot as sociologists rule on the possibility of the subjects' claims of supernatural activity (Miller and Yamamori, Pentecostalism, 153; cf. 104). For further comments on Harris, see ch. 7.

89. Pilch, Healing, 1–4. Cf. varying cultural perceptions today of, e.g., schizophrenia (Furnham and Wong, "Comparison," comparing British and Chinese understandings).

90. Cf. especially Anderson, Ellens, and Fowler, "Way Forward," 249.

91. Cf. Berger, Rumor, 52, 120–21. Some postmodernists retain modernist antisupernaturalism while being more pluralistic on other points (a position critiqued in Licona, Resurrection, 567); nevertheless, postmodern approaches in general are more open to multiple factors in miracle claims than modernists were (Hoffman and Kurzenberger, "Miraculous," 75; cf. Judge, First Christians, 717, for a commonality between postmodernism and the Christian tradition as against the classical tradition).

92. As Roschke, "Healing," 471, suggests, paralleling his entering into another culture, "Do we want to observe Luke's worldview as an outsider—as The Other—or are we willing to enter into this Word . . . ?"

Cf. Wink, "Write," 6; deSilva, "Meaning," 4; Keener, "Comparisons."

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

As Peter Berger notes, true relativism must allow for the possibility of the supernatural.93 Scholars now recognize the limitations of the Enlightenment claims to pure objectivity in historiography; writers' perspectives inform their ways of sorting the data.94 In the wake of postmodernity in the West, the collapse of traditional Western paradigms has led to the reevaluation of a number of long-held interpretations of reality.95 Other disciplines have been through paradigm shifts; some argue that such a shift is needed in ours as well.96 As I shall note later, readers in many cultures, perhaps especially those least trained in Western paradigms, approach early Christian reports of signs not as problems but as a model for ministry. I suspect that this wider, global Christian reading is closer to that of the early

Christian authors' ideal audience than our usual Western approach is.97

After examining the historic context of modern Western skepticism about miracles, I will sample some perspectives from other worldviews. From the conventional historiographic standpoint, the issue for the Gospels and Acts is simply whether eyewitnesses can claim such events (for which the answer must be a decisive yes) rather than resolving the nature of causation. Nevertheless, putting in context our culturally informed interpretations of causation is an important question of its own, which at the least helps us to read the ancient interpretations more sympathetically.

I should pause to distinguish among some terms that could be used. The usual modernist prejudice is against what is supernatural, but this way of defining the question may bias the case, since both the ancient Mediterranean worldview and many other systems of thought allow for intelligent suprahuman activity that is nevertheless part of the natural order.98 "Paranormal" activity is activity that is inexplicable in terms of current knowledge of the natural order, but the label is more neutral, not requiring the presupposition that suprahuman personal entities (such as a deity) are involved; hence, it is a wider term than "suprahuman."

By "suprahuman" is meant, more narrowly, the claim for divine activity or that of 93. Berger, Rumor, 52, 120–21.

94. With reference to historical Jesus studies, see, e.g., Dunn, Remembered, 27–28; cf. Wink,

Transformation, 2–3, 30–31.

95. For postmodernism's critique of Enlightenment rationalism, see, e.g., Smith, Postmodernism, 59–80.

Postmodernity is not the first backlash against the radical Enlightenment. The violent confusion following the French Revolution encouraged popular disillusionment concerning the overly optimistic "Age of Reason," helping to fuel the backlash of Romanticism (Cragg, Reason, 283–84). That intolerant despots sometimes supported the elite's Enlightenment (ibid., 209–33) also reminds us that most movements have some unpleasant political contexts in their history. I am not embracing radical postmodernism nor advocating discarding the many helpful insights of the Enlightenment, but I share concerns about the Enlightenment's overconfident extremes.

96. Note the invitation in Wink, Transformation, 13–15; in other disciplines, see Kuhn, above.

97. See Keener, "Comparisons." For the likelihood of this approach to signs in Acts as applied to the mission of the church as a whole, see discussion in the introduction to Keener, Acts, ch. 15 ("Some Lukan

Emphases"), sect. 6, on signs.

98. Jews and Christians allowed for beings of intermediary rank between God and humans; Greeks allowed gods and demigods, which originated at some point in time and were sometimes subordinate to a supreme deity, to nature, or to fate.

Are Miracles Possible?

other intelligent entities as allowed for in many ancient and modern religious and ancient philosophic systems.99 Perhaps most accurate and with the least customary baggage are expressions like "extranormal" and "extrahuman," though even these terms have weaknesses, not least their absence from general usage. Because what is at issue today is especially encompassed in "supernatural," however, I usually accede to that language in my discussion.

Have We Privileged a Particular Western Worldview?

Some NT scholars have already challenged the traditional critical approach as prejudiced on this point, sometimes by drawing insights from other disciplines or cultures. Charles Talbert notes that some scholars, like Gerd Lüdemann, rule out any historical core of miracle stories, because miracles are assumed not to happen.100

By contrast to such approaches, some writers question whether a priori dismissal of all claims for evidence of supernatural activity is a genuinely open-minded, objective approach.101 As Talbert notes, the question as to whether miracles are possible reflects the understanding of possibility in one's worldview, and "worldviews are highly resistant to disconfirmation. The materialistic worldview, represented by Lüdemann, dictates that the world was and is ruled by iron physical laws that not even God could or can bend." This is, however, a worldview, and not an argument.102

Scholars differ in their evaluations of what is possible, evaluations that in turn shape how they evaluate the historical reliability of claims in Acts103 and the Gospels.

One philosopher warns that those who dismiss miracles yet are unwilling to offer

99. One could define the term more broadly to include any beings more intelligent or equally intelligent but more powerful than humans, physical or nonphysical, the existence of which is unproved but need not be ruled out a priori; yet this definition exceeds what is relevant for the matter under discussion.

100. Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 215; idem, Acts, 248–49 (cf. also the favorable assessment in Parsons, Acts, 52). Against Witherington and Fitzmyer, who protest that rejecting all miracles is itself uncritical, Lüdemann, Acts, 23, contends that "one ought not to begin with the assumption that miracles occur." But the assumption that they do not occur is not more neutral than the belief that they do; one must test evidence. Technically, though, Lüdemann, Acts, 22–23, claims that he does not presuppose the rejection of miracles; only that (23) one cannot presuppose God or gods and should reject the miracle explanation unless no other is available. This limitation may effectively exclude all evidence in practice and bias the investigation (since one could always find some naturalistic explanation, even if it is far less plausible than suprahuman intelligent causation in some cases). Nevertheless, Lüdemann is more precise and honest about his assumptions than are many.

101. The question is well put by Gardner, Healing Miracles, 165, a physician who claims considerable evidence for paranormal healings.

102. Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 215; on the resistance of worldviews to disconfirmation, see also

Wink, "Stories," 212; on experience of healings encouraging a new worldview, see Talbert, Matthew, 323.

For a critique of the materialist worldview from the standpoint of modern physics, see Barr, Physics and Faith (e.g., 256). Reacting against the completely materialist view of the mind, see, e.g., Barr, Physics and Faith, 167–252, esp. 225–26; Beauregard and O'Leary, Brain (the latter supporting dualistic connections with a universal cosmic consciousness). One need not, however, reject a materialist view of the mind to distinguish between a material universe and a source of its structure (i.e., information content) external to it. C. S. Lewis's Miracles, despite its many merits, also appears to appeal more to a Platonic worldview than to modern physics.

103. Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 216.

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

solid arguments need to "admit that they have a faith commitment which precludes the possibility of miracles."104

Sociologists have noted the dominant tendency to interpret reality through our learned world-constructions. David deSilva warns that scholars schooled in an antisupernaturalist approach to miracle claims who cannot critically consider their own presuppositions have trouble approaching the Gospels and Acts on their own terms.105 Meanwhile, dialogue partners that could help them to listen better to the alternative world construction in the texts are often excluded from the conversation. Those who challenge "the world-construction from within by introducing elements from other world-constructions or innovating . . . are either understood as deceived deviants (heretics, 'uncritical') and so tolerated or simply expelled from the conversation which has as its ultimate function" maintaining "the world-construction."106 In sociology of religion terms, this academic intolerance functions as a sort of uncritical "fundamentalism."107 Is there not something inconsistent about (in some academic circles) stifling dissent by refusing to give alternative positions a hearing, all the while claiming to uphold academic "objectivity"?108

Nearly all ancient historians report some phenomena (or at least relate others' reports of such phenomena) that most of us would find dubious. As I have noted, no one seriously dismisses wholesale the value of these works simply because they stem from writers whose philosophic (or religious, political, or moral) perspectives differ from our own. We do not even dismiss all the accounts they relate as wonders or prodigies, whether cures in Jesus's ministry or Roman portents that look like meteor showers. Perhaps more telling with regard to our presuppositions, what we tend to dismiss in them most readily is the credibility of those reports not easily susceptible to alternative (i.e., in our case, naturalistic) explanations. In general, our suspicions are undoubtedly well-founded, grounded as they are in a fuller understanding of scientific reality and the "ordinary" course of events than was available to our ancient counterparts.109

104. Kelly, "Miracle," 52.

105. DeSilva, "Meaning," 4 (employing P. Berger's approach to sociology of religion); cf. similarly

Keener, "Comparisons."

106. DeSilva, "Meaning," 6; cf. 15.

107. Ibid., 20. From a psychological perspective, a rigid "all-or-nothing mentality" is "black and white thinking," which is dysfunctional (Pugh, "Miracle," 80).

108. Note the warning in Wink, Transformation, 24, 29: modern scholarly tradition has supplanted theological dogma, yet still on an epistemology of authority by tradition.

109. Science is traditionally committed to methodological naturalism, an approach that offers useful rigor in exploring patterns of cause and effect (see comment in ch. 5). (For the cultural evolution of this approach, see Numbers, "Science"; concisely idem, "Aggressors," 17–19. Numbers himself does not write from a theistic perspective; see "Introduction," 5–6.) But the early Western scientists who founded most scientific disciplines as we know them conceived this objective and achieved the same practical effect from their premise of order in creation rather than denial of divine design or causation. That is, their naturalism was theistic and presupposed a different philosophic metanarrative than the paradigm dominant today. See discussion in ch. 5. (Deism was itself "a new religion"; see discussion in Spickard and Cragg, Global History, 242.)

Are Miracles Possible?

Yet our current understanding of "ordinary" does not comprehensively describe reality, and before we dismiss all possibility of suprahuman intervention, we are obligated to make explicit and evaluate the presupposition on which such a wholesale dismissal would be based. If we take into account the historically conditioned presuppositions favored in antiquity, we must also consider those of modern academia. These, too, constitute a legitimate context of the discussion, and will be taken into account by subsequent interpreters of current scholarship if (as we may presume likely) the worldview of our era proves as transient as those of its predecessors have. We cannot evade being explicit concerning presuppositions informing much traditional modern historiography if we are to hear the ancient narratives sympathetically, and much less can we do so if we are to honestly examine the possibility that any ancient miracle claims could reflect genuinely suprahuman causation.

We typically ground our critique of supernatural phenomena in a modern Western worldview that we do not question, and then use those untested assumptions to posit an authoritative metanarrative or construal of reality. As children of the Western Enlightenment, many Western biblical scholars reject all reports of supernatural activity out of hand without critically examining the philosophic prejudices that we ourselves bring to the table. One philosopher warns about our tendency to deplore earlier cultures' uncritical embrace of the assumptions of their age while congratulating "our own largely uncritical obedience to the common basic assumptions of our own."110 As a specialist in global healing narratives points out, our modern Western discomfort with such narratives reflects "the disenchanting implications of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic CounterReformation, Cartesian mind-body dualism, and Enlightenment and Darwinian science."111 While some of these approaches have benefited society, many believe that it is reductionist to assume that they explain the entire sphere of reality.

Today, critiques from other cultures and Western postmodernism challenge the hegemonic assumptions of Western Enlightenment tradition. Nevertheless, some modern approaches appear to continue equating critical thinking with dismissing what is essentially other societies' worldviews. They dismiss these views in favor of many Enlightenment traditions without even evaluating the bases for the different approach.112

110. Hart, Delusions, 102.

111. Brown, "Introduction," 10.

112. Although I mention here postmodern critiques, it should be self-evident, in light of my historical methodology in this book and elsewhere, that I welcome many historic Western or Enlightenment methodological contributions. Against many articulations of postmodernity, I do affirm as valuable the goal of pursuing genuine information and its most satisfactory, coherent interpretation as objectively as possible; while this goal may not be perfectly attainable, it offers common ground for academic discussion, whereas refusal to share such a common objective can readily devolve into competing factions in which political strategy and power count more highly than free inquiry (cf. Wink, Transformation, 21: valuing objectivity out of respect for others). Radical postmodernism's approach does not cohere with the goal of most professional historiography in reconstructing various kinds of past events as accurately as possible

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

Some critics may thus immediately dismiss out of hand challenges to examine their worldview (hence may dismiss also the secondary argument of this book), but I suspect that many of these critics do so on the basis of historically conditioned a prioris that they have never seriously examined and that some hold inflexibly. If those who move exclusively in circles where purportedly supernatural experiences are unknown or even ridiculed charge with bias those who take some such claims seriously, those in whose circles or cultures such occurrences are believed to occur will be no less apt to return the charge. Such an impasse of dogmatic assumptions and mutual disrespect (and sometimes unarticulated class division) undercuts any basis for cross-cultural and cross-philosophic dialogue.

Thus some sociologists whose field studies noted extensive claims of miracles, many from purported eyewitnesses, warn that their research might feel threatening to Western scholars "who live out their existence within the shelter of the academy, where everything but faculty politics operates on assumptions of rationality and empirical verifiability."113 They suggest that, for all scholars' talk about being willing to challenge the status quo, a real challenge to the dominant paradigms of academia would be to allow consideration of such phenomena, for which the supernatural explanation is sometimes the most "parsimonious."114

Similarly, nt scholar Walter Wink, a member of the Jesus Seminar, notes that he once thought that his intellectual integrity was alienating him from the world he found in the book of Acts. In fact, he discovered, his difficulty was merely his materialist assumptions about reality.115 Later he observed what he believed were divine healings, incompatible with the antisupernaturalistic assumptions he had once held; these included a large uterine tumor disappearing apparently immediately after prayer.116 "Because of that, and many similar experiences with spiritual healing," he concludes, "I have no difficulty believing that Jesus actually healed people, and not just of psychosomatic diseases."117 Scholars who would deny the truth of his story to defend their worldview, he charges, do so "not on historical grounds, but on the basis of their" materialistic worldview.118

(see the summary of consensus in Licona, Resurrection, 70–89). By contrast, multiple cultural voices enrich options to be considered. Relevant to some discussions later in this book, cf. some Pentecostals' embrace of the postmodern critique of Enlightenment antisupernaturalism while also critiquing aspects of postmodernism (Johns, "Healing," 46, describing Pentecostalism as "paracritical" and liminal rather than precritical); for shared emphasis on experience, see Noel, Hermeneutics (esp. 146–47, 164–81).

113. Miller and Yamamori, Pentecostalism, 158. DeSilva, "Meaning," 17, similarly complains about "armchair" professors who provide mutual support in maintaining an antisupernaturalist worldview, excluding detractors from their conversation.

114. Miller and Yamamori, Pentecostalism, 158 (following Smith, Animals, 109). The principle of parsimony follows Occam's razor.

115. Wink, "Write," 4; cf. idem, "Stories," 214.

116. Wink, "Write," 6.

117. Ibid. Many allow for Jesus to have cured people of psychosomatic ailments (e.g., Burkill, "Miracle").

118. Wink, "Write," 6. In "Worldview," Wink challenges a reductionist materialism (20–21). His "integral worldview," drawing on a range of thinkers, new physics, and world religions, argues for an interior and exterior aspect to everything (21); he advocates panentheism (22), and the close relation of the self to the

Are Miracles Possible?

Wink claims that "historical research depends on analogy" to evaluate the plausibility of accounts about the past,119 but warns that our limited experiences can unfairly constrict the analogies with which we work. "People with an attenuated sense of what is possible will bring that conviction to the Bible and diminish it by the poverty of their own experience."120 Not only medical research regarding mind and body connections, he argues, but especially the new physics have expanded the range of what is now considered possible.121

Other scholars have also pointed out how cultural or other experiential limitations sometimes compromise the usefulness of the analogy argument for historiography, since history is full of apparent anomalies. Some scholars develop a story, long bantered about as an illustration for competing epistemologies, about a king of Siam. Hearing from Dutch visitors about riding horses on top of rivers that became so cold that they became hard like stone, this ruler "knew that the men were liars."122 The king's inference was a logical one based on the reality with which he was familiar; it was his expectation of a rigid uniformity in the human experience of nature that proved inaccurate.123 Defenders of anomalous events thus offer the king as a warning to those who, like David Hume, would rule out extranormal phenomena based on their own limited experiences.

Hume, whose polemic against miracles offers the primary foundation for modernist antisupernaturalism, responded to such critics that "the Indian prince, who refused to believe the first relations concerning the effects of frost, reasoned justly," rightly requiring strong testimony to contravene his uniform experience.124 universe. Murphy, "Social Science," 32–33, values Wink's critique of reductionism but regards it as difficult to classify philosophically. Others also critique reductionist materialism (e.g., Blessing, "Healing," 187).

119. The approach used by Hume, Miracles (e.g., 38); idem, "Miracles" (e.g., 36) and many today (cf., e.g., apparently Craffert, "Origins," 342–43) against affirming miracles.

120. Wink, "Write," 6.

121. Wink, "Stories," 213.

122. McClymond, Stranger, 83; cf. Brown, Miracles, 129, applying this argument against Troeltsch. (Cf.

Silvoso, Perish, 101–2, comparing the incomprehensibility of Mexico City's smog in rural Greenland.)

Likewise, Blomberg, Gospels, 111, argues that the real problem is not with lack of analogies (since one from a warm region might lack analogies for ice), but with analogies to what is unhistorical, e.g., UFO sightings that have so often "turned out to be air-balloons" and other such phenomena. As I shall note, the numbers involved in UFO sightings are not easily comparable to hundreds of millions claiming to have witnessed miracles.

123. Bitzer, "Prince," treats the history of this analogy from Locke to Hume and Richard Price. The story began with Locke's 1690 essay on the importance of testimony (Bitzer, "Prince," 176); Hume tried to remove it from his opponents' arsenal but proved unsuccessful (Bitzer, "Prince," 175). Locke treats this extraordinary event as essentially a "miracle" for the king of Siam; Hume demurs, because he treats a miracle only as a violation of nature's laws (Bitzer, "Prince," 179). Defending Hume, Coleman, "Probability," 208–12, contends that he used the Indian prince (in his version) simply to show a reasonable skepticism that could nevertheless be countered by evidence, on a point more tenable than miracles. I would agree, however, with those who saw in the example reason to be open to phenomena beyond our normal experience. Meanwhile, many defenders of miracles employed this story to weaken the argument from experience more than Hume did, hence inadvertently working against their argument for miracles (Bitzer, "Prince," 221).

124. Hume, Miracles, 29; idem, "Miracles," 32. Hume responded to Locke the only way he could without rendering his own position more difficult to defend (Burns, Debate, 167).

Antisupernaturalism as an Authenticity Criterion?

Yet Hume's attempt to seize this argument from his opponents' arsenal fails. His very analogy (for the necessity of analogy) inadvertently concedes that human experience is not uniform and that sufficient testimony (which many philosophic critics believe already existed in his day to challenge sufficiently his position about miracles) should be allowed to challenge the uniformity of a single person's or even culture's experience.125 The prince, who lacks experience of freezing, cannot extrapolate with certainty from his nonexperience of it,126 and people in everyday situations cannot extrapolate from their nonexperience of potential situations of special divine significance, such as miracle claims imply.127 One cannot inductively prove a negative without examining every possible instance, and this problem becomes increasingly precarious as the sample size grows more limited. (I turn to Hume in more detail in the following chapter and to the historiographic analogy argument, as developed especially by Troeltsch, especially in ch. 6.)

Indeed, the argument that precise analogies are necessary for plausibility might challenge contemporary scientists' affirmation of the big bang, since it is unique in some sense; nevertheless, most scientists believe that evidence is sufficient to overturn such skepticism, as many people believe that evidence is sufficient to overturn skepticism in the case of miracles.128 Unless one works from the presupposition that miracles have not otherwise occurred, they also need not be unique events, given other defensible miracle claims; they may be merely unusual. In any case, as I note in the following chapters, the analogy argument today makes miracles more rather than less plausible.129 That is, an argument once formulated against miracles would now, with our broader knowledge of human experience, support it. In the following chapter, I shall suggest that thinkers like Hume, alongside his hypothetical Indian prince, ought to be wise enough to accept sufficient testimony.

Conclusion Ancient historiography includes a tradition of suspicion concerning sensational claims about extranormal phenomena, as well as (often cautious) reports of such phenomena. It was the radical Enlightenment, however, that introduced

125. See the criticism in Larmer, Water, 39; Earman, Failure, 34–35; earlier Taylor, Hume, 8–10. As Geisler, "Miracles," 79, warns, Hume's argument against miracles formally contends "that we should not believe in a miracle even if it happens!" Gaskin, Philosophy, 125, observes that Hume plays "the Indian prince" in his own essay, dismissing possible events "solely on the grounds that they do not conform to his rather imperfect grasp of what constitute laws of nature."

126. Burns, Debate, 227.

127. No one argues for simply embracing all claims uncritically. Many further argue for the importance of the theological or religious context for genuinely divine miracles (see discussion in the next chapter).

That scholars even within the same faiths or movements sometimes vary in understanding that context suggests that the matter is complex.

128. With Geisler, "Miracles," 79; Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 102n39 (citing, e.g., Hawking and Penrose, Space and Time, 20, though Hawking's views have changed).

129. See, e.g., Theissen and Merz, Guide, 310 (on healings and exorcisms).

Are Miracles Possible?

thoroughgoing suspicion of all supernatural claims. While many scholars continue to operate with this radical Enlightenment paradigm, its dogmatism, perhaps inherited from an earlier era of religious disputes, fares poorly when evaluated from the perspectives and claims of many other cultures or a post-Enlightenment critique.

The radical Enlightenment perspective on miracles has its own cultural and historical context that is not even the context of current Western scientific discovery.

In the following two chapters, I explore in somewhat more detail modern philosophic objections to miracles. As I shall note afterward, however, a global context seriously weakens the persuasive force of these traditional objections today.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions 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.

—David Hume1 And what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events, which they relate? And this surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation.

—David Hume2 A s I have noted, the central thrust of this book is that eyewitnesses do offer miracle reports, whatever the claims' actual explanation. The secondary and more potentially controversial point, however, is to invite consideration of potentially supranatural explanations as a legitimate explanatory option. I address that question here so that readers can keep it in mind when we begin to listen to the stories in chapters 7–12. Starting from an assumption agnostic about supernatural activity, not all the stories are most easily explained supernaturally, but some are

(esp. in ch. 12). What is important to note in this chapter is that the assumption that suprahuman activity is impossible is an interpretive grid, not a demonstrated fact. Contrary to what appeared to be the case to many intellectuals one or two centuries ago, history does not support a linear evolution of all cultures toward this perspective.3 One worldview expects miracles, whereas another doubts them, and each interprets experiences and phenomena accordingly. Both worldviews, however, are equally presuppositions.4 Indeed, a stance critically open to the possibility of miracles allows for the most open-minded stance.5

1. Hume, Miracles, 30–31 (cf. 51); idem, "Miracles," 33.

2. Hume, Miracles, 44; idem, "Miracles," 40.

3. See Cladis, "Modernity"; Butler, "Theory"; cf. also Haught, Atheism, 58–59.

4. See Swinburne, Miracle, 71.

5. Tonquédec, Miracles, 89–90, argues that the believer who is open to but is not obligated to accept a given miracle claim has more intellectual freedom than the nonbeliever whose stance compels their rejection.

Are Miracles Possible?

What This Chapter Will Address In this chapter and the next one, I argue that the reigning paradigm of antisupernaturalism is only a presupposition, one that need not coercively shape our interpretation of miracle reports in later chapters. Because many readers will find the content of this chapter particularly heavy, I summarize its central thesis here.

After noting that eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume's opposition to affirming miracles was not the only Enlightenment empiricist approach, I will argue that to succeed logically his approach must presuppose atheism or deism.

That is, it is not a neutral argument, and its conclusion does not inevitably follow unless one can establish this unspoken premise.

Further, Hume defines away miracles based on a deterministic reading of natural law; this approach was hardly inevitable, as may be recognized from its contrast with the approach of most early Enlightenment scientists. More problematic, many critics today point out that the metaphysical assumptions informing Hume's argument here do not work in light of modern physics. Most important, contrary to his claim to be reasoning inductively, Hume works in a deductive circle, as scholars often note. He argues, based on "experience," that miracles do not happen, yet dismisses credible eyewitness testimony for miracles (i.e., others' experience) on his assumption that miracles do not happen.

The full argument of both Hume and this chapter is a bit more complex, especially since there are competing interpretations of what Hume really intended,6 but the above paragraph summarizes the primary points that we must cover in this chapter. I shall also suggest that today the testimonial evidence for miracles is overwhelming compared with what was available to Hume in his day; had he lived in our day, an argument based on the nonexperience of miracles would have proved much more difficult and much less persuasive to his contemporaries (and perhaps even to Hume himself).

In contrast to some elements in this book, this chapter is not a positive argument for miracles or even for the existence of extranormal phenomena. It is, rather, intended to show why scholars are not entitled to simply dismiss the possibility of supernatural causation for some extranormal experiences. Readers who are not persuaded by my argument should at least recognize that this question is currently a live debate in philosophy and that it is academically illegitimate to marginalize voices that affirm miracles simply by citing a nonexistent philosophic consensus against miracles. This warning should also apply to those who, based on antisupernatural assumptions, profess willingness to accept evidence but place the bar of proof so high that they exclude even evidence that would normally be acceptable in law or historiography.

6. As Tucker, "Miracles," 374, points out, "Parts of Hume's essay are ambiguous," weakening the value of critiques or defenses targeted toward only a single line of interpretation. Although many modern interpreters, perhaps out of respect for Hume's intellect, generously absolve him of denying in principle that any testimony could prove sufficient to render a miracle claim believable, Larmer, "Interpreting Hume," defends the traditional reading that Hume tried to argue just that.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

The Nature of the Questions A limited methodological naturalism interprets phenomena on natural terms when possible (with or without possible divine providence at work) and looks for natural causes and effects. Especially when addressing large-scale, typical phenomena in nature, this approach is immensely valuable heuristically.7 Many of the early modern scientists who pioneered such an approach did so while affirming

Christian beliefs, contending that the Creator designed the universe to act usually in predictable ways. This valuable heuristic tool should not, however, be confused with a thoroughgoing philosophic naturalism that a priori rejects the possibility of activity reflecting suprahuman intelligent activity, including some claims about events that might be empirically verified or falsified.8

The issues involved in this discussion are complex and not readily resolved by any appeal to consensus.9 Philosophers debate the meaning of "miracle," and Hume's many academic critics today assail him from a range of perspectives, some of them conflicting.10 My point in this chapter is not, however, to provide a survey of contemporary philosophy but to offer challenges and alternatives to the 7. So also, e.g., Evans, Narrative, 159; Davies, "Preface," xi (on Davies, see Frankenberry, Faith, 412–36).

Thus my Historical Jesus largely followed consensus methodology (working from some shared common assumptions within the academy), and I have reserved more methodological questions for the present book.

Although some scholars wrongly invoke methodological naturalism to exclude consideration of divine agency as irrational, it can be used to simply designate the limited sphere of inquiry (cf., e.g., O'Connor, "Science,"

17; Plantinga, "Science," 100–101). Because we humans do not fully compartmentalize, though, continuous application of methodological naturalism does risk making metaphysical naturalism appear more plausible.

8. Earlier, Tennant, Miracle, 25, distinguished purely methodological "descriptionism" (excluding explanation from scientific inquiry proper—which science in fact cannot do) from a more problematic, inconsistently prescriptive role of "descriptionism" that might treat explanation as invalid. Nineteenth-century British statesman

William Gladstone criticized both the constriction of science methodologically and its often inconsistently consequent universal metaphysical claims (Numbers, "Aggressors," 35–36). Others depict the distinction in terms of methodological and metaphysical naturalism (Plantinga, "Science," 100–101; Evans, Narrative,

158–61; Geivett and Habermas, "Introduction," 12, 21; Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 99n28; idem,

Resurrection, 142n28), mere "methodological strategy" versus "ontological judgment" (Polkinghorne in Frankenberry, Faith, 344), or methodological versus ontological reductionism (Davies, "Preface," xi–xii).

Against reductionism, some cite the "emergentist" principle in which the complex whole is greater than the micro-level physical components (e.g., Davies, "Downward Causation," 35–39, 50–51; Kim, "Realistic," 189).

Some would illustrate this principle, for example, by the toxic elements sodium and chlorine combining to produce table salt (Deacon, "Emergence," 121); a fuller epistemology must examine the more complex whole and not simply, as in usual scientific data collection, constituent elements. Some other thinkers critique forms of emergentism as nonetheless monistic, employing an unproved premise (Smith, Thinking, 90–92).

9. The appeal to consensus tends to be overused in any case (note the warning in Poirier, "Consensus"), sometimes as an almost religious appeal to authority that conflicts with strict rationalist or empiricist epistemologies.

10. These include lengthy works such as Swinburne, Miracle (Macmillan, 1970); Beckwith, Argument

(University Press of America, 1989); more recent works by major university presses such as Houston,

Miracles (Cambridge, 1994); Johnson, Hume (Cornell, 1999; criticized in Fogelin, Defense, 32–40); Earman,

Failure (Oxford, 2000; criticized in Fogelin, Defense, 40–53, esp. denying Hume's use of the "straight rule," also doubted in Sober, "Proposal," 493, though he is more appreciative of Earman [ibid.]); and a large number of articles and other works, some of which I have cited below. Perhaps the most spirited attack on Hume's approach derives from Earman, who, against the ad hominem critiques of some of his detractors,

Are Miracles Possible?

antisupernaturalist consensus that much of modern academia has inherited from Hume. Rather than focusing on a single objection or position, I will rehearse several contemporary objections to this legacy of antisupernaturalism.11

For the general purposes used here, a "miracle" may be defined as an extraordinary event with an unusual supernatural cause,12 although this definition is problematic from a number of vantage points. It is problematic from conventional theistic perspectives because all that is natural has an ultimate supernatural cause; indeed, even aside from creation, some dramatic biblical miracles such as the parting of the sea include proximate natural causes (such as the strong east wind,

Exod 14:21).13 It is also problematic because "extraordinary" and "unusual" (the adjectives by which I seek to adjust for the first problem) are normally a matter of degree. The relevance of these terms' applicability in a given case may thus prove subject to much contention.14 Showing an event to be demonstrably supernatural is, as we shall see, also epistemologically problematic, especially given different observers' varying standards for proof. (For example, at the extreme, some would does not adhere to Christian theology (Failure, viii) and is not really arguing in support of miracles (note the criticism in Tucker, "Miracles," 389). He views his task as simply exposing Hume's poor argument.

11. Some combine elements of various conceptions (as in Kellenberger, "Miracles," noting on 145 that violation miracles, contingency miracles, and natural miracles are coherent and together cover all miracles; Nichols, "Supernatural," 25, also allows for more than one kind of miracle). I use the expression

"antisupernaturalism" since opposition to the supernatural, rather than mere observation of and reflection on natural phenomena, is its defining and objectionable characteristic. Some so define "naturalism," e.g., Tonquédec, Miracles, 5. It is important, however, to distinguish methodological from metaphysical naturalism, and the latter exists as such by negating the possibility of the supernatural, not by simply ignoring the question; thus I find "antisupernaturalism" more precise in much of the context in which I use the term.

12. Tucker, "Miracles," 378, offers as a summary of biblical miracles "divine feats of strength," emphasizing the conflict with polytheistic divine claims in early biblical sources. McGrew, "Argument,"

596, helpfully suggests, "a specific event that would not have happened if only the natural order had been operating" (treating "natural order" in terms of entities bound by matter).

13. For the parting of the sea conceptualized as a miracle, despite Hume's definition, see also, e.g.,

Clarke, "Definition," 53. In traditional Christian theism, God may at times suspend some laws, but God also can work through natural processes or speed them up (Nichols, "Supernatural," e.g., 40). Nevertheless, some biblical miracles appear more as exceptions to nature's regularity (for a range of biblical approaches, see, e.g., Kasher, "Miracles").

14. Polkinghorne, Science and Providence, 50, accepts "extraordinary" (with Swinburne, Miracle, 1; earlier, e.g., Trench, Miracles, 9; Tonquédec, Miracles, 2) but not "intervention" (against Lewis, Miracles, 15), arguing that "there is no sharp separation to be made between general providence and special providence and a miracle." Polkinghorne makes an analogy (50–51) with characteristics of physical laws that become evident only at extremely high temperatures or under other unusual circumstances, while acknowledging limits to the analogy's utility. The distance between "extraordinary" "miracles" and "providence" might also be said to vary with respect to different miracles—the creation event (on a big bang/creation ex nihilo understanding) and resurrection (inaugurating a new creation) being particularly extraordinary. Some distinguish between "ordinary" miracles (natural improbabilities) and "extraordinary" miracles (natural impossibilities; Flach, Faith, viii); not addressing the Enlightenment, Scripture does not concern itself with such distinctions. Cf. Aquinas grading miracles according to the greatness of their witness (McInerny,

Miracles, 146). Because God could alter nature's usual course as easily as maintain it, theologian Samuel

Clarke (1675–1729) defined miracles as unusual in contrast to God's usual working (Daston, "Facts,"

117). Gwynne, Action, 23–38, notes the problems many raise with the distinction between general and special divine action but goes on to support identifying the latter.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

rule out any evidence supporting the claim that an event is supernaturally caused.

By contrast, a position of Christian faith is likely to affirm God's activity in every situation, however ordinary it appears.) Nevertheless, among the range of proposed definitions, this one can function as useful for discussion.15 I have not deemed all arguments against miracles relevant enough for my intended audience to address them here, but others have treated such objections elsewhere.16

As events, phenomena that people interpret as miracles can be examined scientifically and historically, debates about interpretation notwithstanding.17 Regardless of causation, a person either did recover from a disease or did not, although we quite often lack access to information that makes the initial diagnosis certain.

Historians may treat events without expressing certainty about their causes; for example, though scholars do not agree whether Carloman died of natural causes or murder (on orders of his brother Charlemagne), there is little debate as to whether he died in 771 c.e.18 Likewise, nt scholars can reasonably write about Jesus as a miracle worker, as we have seen, without venturing into the more controversial questions of the character and source of his miracles.

Nevertheless, it is also customary in most disciplines to hypothesize about possible causes; the disciplines that customarily do so include history and medical science. What do we discover if we ask causal questions regarding the matters under discussion? As I shall note in chapters 13–15, estimates of probabilities vary both because of the observers' perspectives and from one case to another.

If persons suffering from a particular illness normally recover particularly after rest and rehydration, we might plausibly attribute a restorative effect to purely natural factors like these. But what if a number of people recovered very quickly after prayer, and the recovery was otherwise unusual? Although supernatural explanations become more attractive, one is still not compelled to offer a supernatural explanation; psychosomatic factors could be at work. Let us say, however, that psychosomatic factors are implausible in a given sort of case (say, the person has been dead for two or three hours, so far as can be discerned from breathing and pulse, and in normal cases the brain starts dying within six minutes of such

15. For debates about the most useful definitions, see, e.g., Larmer, "Laws," 227 (an act caused by God that nature would not have produced without this); Fitzgerald, "Miracles," 48 (clearly superhuman); Mawson,

"Miracles," 56 ("a sign of particular supernatural agency," involving divine volition); Mumford, "Miracles,"

192–93 (a natural event with a supernatural cause, on 191 demurring from Hume, Swinburne, and others);

Clarke, "Response" (emphasizing supernatural intention; cf. Fern, "Critique," 351–54); Luck, "Defense," especially 468–69 (supernatural intent is irrelevant); Clarke, "Luck" (arguing against Mumford and that Luck's answer is beside the point). For one survey of the range of definitions, see Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 94–95, esp. n. 3; idem, Resurrection, 134–36n3; for three extensive theistic approaches, see

Larmer, Water, 5–15; Swinburne, "Introduction," 2–10; Purtill, "Defining Miracles." For one survey of views about miracles in the past century, see Brown, Miracles, 171–238 (and, with more focus specifically on Jesus's miracles, 239–77); for one survey of views about biblical miracles, see Blomberg, "Miracles," 427–37.

16. E.g., Evans, Narrative, 137–69.

17. With, e.g., Sider, "Methodology," 30, 33; Beckwith, "History and Miracles," 88; Habermas, Evidence, 25.

18. Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 123; idem, Resurrection, 177; Licona and Van der Watt,

"Adjudication of Miracles," 2. Cf. a similar debate in antiquity about a famous general's death in Velleius

Paterculus Compendium 2.4.6.

Are Miracles Possible?

conditions). If a number of recoveries in such cases follow prayer for the person to return to life, and such recoveries occur far less frequently in the absence of this factor, might we not be justified in exploring further a possible relationship between the prayer and the restoration?19 In some sorts of cases, a supernatural explanation might prove the most plausible explanation available.20

To exclude the possibility of some sort of suprahuman and possibly supernatural intelligent causation is to a priori rule out what may be a very plausible explanation of some evidence—yet many Western intellectuals do just this. Some would exclude any miracle claim—even if it were the public raising of a person clinically dead for several days—merely on the presupposed grounds that miracles do not happen. How does the critic know that miracles do not happen? The critic may argue, like David Hume, from the uniformity of human experience against miracles—a circular argument that excludes the evidence of the claim supposedly under consideration and other claims like it.21 Or the critic may contend from an atheistic standpoint that one knows that God or other suprahuman intelligences do not exist and hence cannot provide a source of supernatural phenomena. Unfortunately for that assumption, the denial of God's existence is, contrary to what some scholars suppose, not widely accepted as a straightforward premise among current philosophers of religion22 (or even among all scientists)23 hence will hardly pass as a presupposition without argument.

19. For some kinds of events (specifically in his case Jesus's resurrection, which Hume essentially emphasizes in the guise of a raised "queen" [Miracles, 52], as noted in Coleman, "Probability," 219, and widely), Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 402, 414, contends that fanciful and diverse reconstructions of the disciples' psychohistory prove more complicated than the simpler and thus more parsimonious assumption that a miracle occurred. (Regarding Jesus's resurrection in Hume, cf. also discussion in Howard-Snyder, "Case," esp. 398–99, 407–11.) Theologically, Calvinists may regard prayer as a factor, yet one that God predetermined (see comments in Young, "Petitioning," 198; he also treats divine foreknowledge and human freedom as compatible, 201). Although I do not seek to arbitrate among specific theological approaches in this book (a number of scholars now cite quantum indeterminacy to support a randomly "branched" future), I do not find any logical implausibility in this proposal concerning prayer.

20. With Johnson, Hume, 73 (regarding Jesus's resurrection). A historian should seek the most plausible among competing hypotheses explaining an event, and God's action, like that of a human actor, should be allowed among them (Young, "Epistemology, 124–25), especially when naturalistic explanations appear inadequate. Inferring an intelligent suprahuman cause does not allow us to make predictions in the way one would in hard physics or mathematics, since persons act on a higher level of complexity than may be adequately described by current physical laws (psychology, for example, cannot predict an individual's behavior with the same measure of precision with which mathematical physics can predict that of projectiles in given conditions). Hume allows causal inferences provided we have natural analogies for them

(Fosl, "Hume," 178), but this limitation again requires a nontheistic approach.

21. Precisely what Hume does in arguing against a resurrection claim that such an event "has never been observed in any age or country" (Hume, Miracles, 31; idem, "Miracles," 33). Cf. Giere, "Naturalism,"

222: naturalism excludes deities by definition. See further the following chapters on such observations.

22. See Smith, "Metaphilosophy," 197 (quantifying publications on the subject and himself writing from a naturalistic perspective). In a 2007 Baylor survey, only 4 percent of people in the United States were atheists (with 6 to 7 percent as agnostics), and another survey suggests a figure of 1 to 6 percent in most other Western countries (Stark, Believe, 62, 117, 122, as cited in Licona, Resurrection, 159n92).

23. Salam, "Science," 93–94, even opines that most scientists recognize a supreme being, a "superior intelligence." Whether or not theistic scientists are a majority statistically (they may not be, although

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

More reasonably, the critic may argue that since there is no consensus about God's existence, a critic is excused from considering this cause.24 Yet historians offer hypotheses about all sorts of causes on which there is no consensus, especially where political, ethnic, and other biases hinder the likelihood of consensus ever being achieved.25 To argue that claims about divine causation belong exclusively to theologians' specialization and therefore that others need not consider it merely passes the methodological buck, forcing theologians to address the philosophy of historiography, and so forth.

But even if the historian as historian reasonably decides not to pronounce judgment on causation, it does not logically follow that one may say that such a historian has disproved divine causation or that any historical evidence has ruled out such causation. To make such a claim is entirely circular, constituting nothing more than a restatement of the presuppositions with which one began the discussion. Refusing to arbitrate the possibility of divine causation to avoid controversy merely takes a methodologically agnostic stance; to reject the possibility of divine causation, however, takes an atheistic or deistic one.26 The latter (atheistic or deistic) position is not philosophically neutral.27 Why is it so common in academia? Because academicians, like others, are often unconsciously shaped by the worldviews that we take over from our intellectual heritage, frequently uncritically. they are a sizable and growing proportion, Weber, "Figure"; see esp. Ecklund, Science; idem, "Religion"), they cannot be said to be rare (see, e.g., many respondents in Margenau and Varghese, Cosmos, already noted above, and others not mentioned, including Yoshikawa, "Variables," 135; Szentágothai, "Existence,"

216–17; also Frankenberry, Faith, passim; the observations of Davies, Mind, 15–16). Oursler, Power, 26, quotes Louis Pasteur as claiming that "a little science estranges men from God; much science leads them back to Him." As a former atheist, I smile at, without concurring with, the hyperbole of Johns Hopkins biology professor C. B. Anfinsen in "Power," 139: "I think only an idiot can be an atheist." The academic question more strictly belongs to the discipline of philosophy of religion rather than to science, but my point here is that popular perceptions of scientists being atheists lends unfair weight to the intellectual status of atheism and privileges the public pronouncements of particular scientists, like the late Carl Sagan

(whose actual views appear more nuanced, though lacking an intimate understanding of Christian faith; see material in Frankenberry, Faith, 222–48), against the beliefs of many other scientists.

24. It is true that presuppositions will shape a historian's conclusions on the matter (Richardson, Miracle

Stories, 126–27), but this recognition need not require relinquishing an attempt to dialogue on the issue.

Martin, "Historians on Miracles," 417, understands Meier as arguing that historians ought not to decide for or against the possibility of miracles, an approach that would inadvertently close off the possibility of accepting compelling evidence for one.

25. See Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 108 (cf. also 125–26); idem, Resurrection, 155–56; cf.

Licona and Van der Watt, "Adjudication of Miracles," 3–4. In contrast to science, history requires weighing the meaning and significance of events (Lonergan, Method, 179–80, 215). Marsden, Outrageous Idea,

6, 51–54, complains that scholars working from Marxist or other ideologies work openly from their perspectives within the academy, yet working from expressly religious convictions is far less fashionable; cf. also McGreevy, "Histories," 65.

26. Cf. the warning of Ronald Sider: regardless of personal views, historians must remain methodologically agnostic, allowing for but not requiring the possibility of miracles (Sider, "Methodology," 28).

27. See, e.g., the critique in Padgett, "Advice," 290–91; cf. also the complaint about the academy's prevailing "methodological deism" ("at best") in Bowald, Rendering, 18 (even denying the possibility of neutrality on 22).

Are Miracles Possible?

Hume's Argument from Nature As many scholars today note, antisupernaturalism is little more than a presupposition, rarely argued and rarely seeking to marshal evidence.28 Seventeenthand eighteenth-century rational philosophy rather than any specific evidence is largely responsible for the usual summary dismissal of belief in supernatural phenomena in the modern academy.29 As I noted in the last chapter, such an approach had some classical precedents, though these precedents were by no means common enough to persuade most of their contemporaries at that time.

More influentially than most earlier thinkers, seventeenth-century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza argued that miracles are self-contradictory, because, based on his monistic identification of God with the natural order, he viewed "laws of Nature" as identical with God or God's will.30 Spinoza's approach was heavily indebted to Descartes, but whereas theism was part of Descartes' approach, Spinoza seems to have adapted Cartesian methodology in light of pantheistic conceptions of medieval Kabbala.31 At the same time, Spinoza's naturalistic determinism was influenced by the prominent Calvinist determinism of his seventeenth-century

Dutch setting.32 Thus, on his approach, if any miracle reports are true, they must

28. E.g., Torrance, "Probability," 249–50; Kee, Miracle, 3–12; Gregory, "Secular Bias"; deSilva,

"Meaning," 13–18; Sabourin, Miracles, 14; Stein, Messiah, 18–23; Marsden, Outrageous Idea, 29, 74; Nash,

"Conceptual Systems," 119–23; also Pannenberg, Jesus, 109 (cited in Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection,"

93; idem, Resurrection, 133); and the other scholars cited below. Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 372–73, note that many scholars skeptical about the Gospel tradition are on record as presupposing that miracles do not happen.

29. Benoit, Jesus, 1:39; see also Kee, Miracle, 3–12; Dembski, Design, 49–69. For one lengthy response to this worldview, see Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 39–90.

30. See Dembski, Design, 55; Tonquédec, Miracles, 10; Léon-Dufour, "Approches," 15; Loos, Miracles,

11; Dunn, Remembered, 29; McGrew, "Miracles" (3.1.1); cf. Zachman, "Meaning," 3–5; Barbour, Religion and Science, 16; Culpepper, "Problem of Miracles," 212; Keller, Miracles, 29–39; Rognon, "Relecture"; earlier,

Trench, Miracles, 51–53; Bernard, "Miracle," 380; on Spinoza's approach to miracles, see also Walther,

"Kritik." Spinoza's approach to the text of Scripture was far more skeptical (Popkin, "Bible Scholar," 105,

110) than biblical scholarship today. Against miracles being self-contradictory (often challenging Hume's or later formulations), see, e.g., Miller, "Miracle"; Landrum, "Miracle," 56–57. Against most, Hunter,

"Spinoza," argues that Spinoza did not deny miracles' existence. Spinoza was expelled from his synagogue in 1656 (Keller, Miracles, 39; Brown, Miracles, 30–31), and certainly differed from earlier Jewish tradition; in medieval Jewish philosophy, see Kreisel, "Miracles." Maimonides (1135–1204) apparently moved from complete determinism to allowing for miracles (Langermann, "Maimonides"; for his possible influence on Newton in some other respects, see Popkin, "Comments"); later, Gersonides (1288–1344) rationalized them to a degree while retaining them as miracles (see Klein-Braslavy, "Use"). Judaism historically has emphasized both nature as a miracle and individual miracles (Birnbaum, "Polemic," 441–44; though in hb, cf. Kasher, "Miracles").

31. Brown, Miracles, 31–32 (on Descartes, see also 25–26). Later Cartesian thinkers rather than

Descartes himself advocated epistemological skepticism, a problem Descartes had intended his egocentric approach to overcome (Burns, Debate, 27–28). Descartes employed skepticism heuristically (Landesman,

Epistemology, 78), not actually suspending all belief and living accordingly (80–81). Hume and logical positivists pressed disbelief further (Lonergan, Insight, 411). Even the character of his dualism has been exaggerated (Harrison, "Descartes").

32. Brown, Miracles, 32.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

have naturalistic explanations not yet discovered,33 an approach that, as we shall see, has persisted. Spinoza views miracles as self-contradictory because he believes that the divine nature is identical with natural law. Yet this assumption, for all its compatibility with the plausibility structures of some past rationalist systems, is open to critique from theological and philosophic readings of contemporary physics.34

Ironically, much subsequent thought has simply assumed Spinoza's thoroughgoing naturalism while rejecting his pantheism.35 To note this potential inconsistency is not to advocate a return to his pantheism; a monistic interpretation is hardly the only possible approach. For example, one might reject Spinoza's pantheism and allow for a source of information content36 external to the material universe; in this case, the necessity of subordinating that intelligence's activity to natural law disappears.37 Some cosmologists believe such an external source necessary

33. Ibid. Spinoza in fact appealed to biblical reports of miracles, offering naturalistic explanations for the events (ibid., 32–33).

34. Dembski, Design, 55, on Spinoza; on modern physics, see Meyer, "Evidence," 53–66, and sources he cites. Some respond reasonably that indeterminism addresses particles, not daily life (cf. Loos, Miracles,

77); but human intelligence affects more basic nature in daily life, so by analogy a superintelligent agency could do so still more (see discussion below).

35. Pantheism may have appealed especially to philosophers who came to accept the universe as infinite (cf. Heim, Transcendent, 34), but current physics treats it as finite. Both the major infusion of complex information and order into the big bang theory's closed system of a finite universe with a past beginning and some modern theorizing about the cosmic anthropic principle (see influentially the early work of Barrow and Tipler, Principle, though they would not support a traditional theistic application, e.g., appearing skeptical of an extranatural intelligence, 107) could now be used to argue against identifying

Creator with creation. That is, monism's appeal is now more culturally negotiable than it once was (see, e.g., Barr, Physics and Faith; on the anthropic principle, 118–57). Physics' cosmology changes rapidly, though (with, e.g., Barbour, Religion and Science, 198), so any theological reflections grounded in it must remain tentative and ready to adapt.

36. Polkinghorne, "Chaos Theory," 251, tentatively recalls the view of "top-down interaction through active information"; cf. idem, Reality, 35; Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 51, on "active information" as "a causal principle"; in greater detail, see Gwynne, Action, 189–203, 321–22; for a broader, less theological approach, cf. "downward causation" in Davies, "Downward Causation"; Murphy, "Causation," 228–30; Chal mers, "Emergence," 248–50 (without committing to it); top-down complex causality in Ellis, "Nature," 82–92.

As the whole influencing the function of the parts approach, "emergence" is not necessarily supernaturalist, but it is amenable to a theistic interpretation (Gregersen, "Emergence," esp. 280). For the analogy of divine information input into the universe, see, e.g., Peacocke, "Incarnation," 328, 330 (citing, e.g., Bowker, Sense; but part of Peacocke's argument also rests on a flawed historic understanding of incarnation; see esp. Hurtado,

Become God; idem, Lord Jesus Christ; idem, One God); for the analogy of divine information input into the universe and human creative "shaping-information," see Puddefoot, "Information Theory," 312. Cf. also the analogy of a book being "caused" not only by a printing press but also by authors and publishers (invoked by Haught, Atheism, 85, 88–89, against monistic naturalistic explanations). Note also the emergence approach above, in which nondeterministic larger principles of complexity structure, without contradicting, the microlevel dynamics to which physics usually attends (Davies, "Preface," xii–xiii); one might compare the sense of a sentence versus that of its isolated constituent grammatical elements. The "weak" form of the emergence approach currently dominates physics, but the "strong" form may be gaining ground (Clayton, "Foundations," 27) and appears highly fruitful for scientific-theological dialogue. Theologians such as Schleiermacher,

Ritschl, and Barth weakened reliance on natural theology, but it has experienced a more recent resurgence, notably often among theologically oriented scientists (Roberts, "Darwin," 167–68).

37. This is not to deny the consistency of patterns that point to such intelligence, but to deny that such intelligence could act only in accordance with such patterns as if determined by them. For arguments about

Are Miracles Possible?

to explain the structured results of the big bang.38 Most theists have so far preferred this approach to its primary competitor in current cosmology, namely, the explanation of a vast number of independent universes.39 Many argue that it is not only that multiple universes are not yet empirically supported40—hence the hypothesis is not strictly scientific,41 despite that proposal's occasional pretensions as such. More important, the multiple universe proposal appears less rationally parsimonious than appeal to a single source of information content.42 That is, if intelligent causation, see discussion and especially notes below. Contrast Epicurean atomic monism with the Stoic affirmation of intelligence (logos) structuring nature (physis); on this logos, cf., e.g., Diogenes

Laertius 7.1.88, 134; Marcus Aurelius 7.9; Long, Philosophy, 120, 148–49. Nevertheless, early Stoics could be described as pantheistic (later, Cicero Nat. d. 2.7.19–20; Seneca Nat. 1.pref.13; 2.45.1–2; Dial.

7.8.4; Ep. Lucil. 95.52; Marcus Aurelius 4.40; Diogenes Laertius 7.1.134; 7.1.148; see further Baltzly,

"Stoic Pantheism"; Klauck, Context, 353–54; cf. Jacquette, "Divinity"; cf. critiques by an Epicurean in Cicero Nat. d. 1.10.24; 1.13.34; a nonphilosopher in Lucian Hermot. 81), and held to a form of monism

(Gould, Philosophy of Chrysippus; Todd, "Monism"). Even in the modern period, viewing the existing universe as too "improbable" by chance, because its present structure is not logically necessary, is a long-standing argument (see, e.g., Sturch, "Probability," 353–54, on 351 following Tennant); for a design argument from the early twentieth century, see, e.g., discussion in Tennant, Theology, 2:121–26 (along with discussion of scientific laws, 1–50; rational structure in nature, 51–77; and cosmic teleology, 78–120; others also affirmed such design, e.g., briefly Tonquédec, Miracles, 2). Polkinghorne in Frankenberry,

Faith, 351, cites "chance" (as "historical contingency") in evolution as helping with theodicy, while contending that evolution is not in all respects "blind" or without a goal. Kenneth Miller, a leading opponent of the current intelligent design movement (which he frames esp. with respect to evolution), recognizes an intelligent design in terms of "order, meaning, and purpose in existence" (Miller, "Darwin,"

81, 85–86). Some scholars' current controversial formulations of design against forms of evolution notwithstanding (the dichotomy is not obligatory; cf., e.g., Johnson, "Neurotheology," 220; Plantinga,

"Science," 107, 114–16; the papal commission cited in Miller, "Darwin," 90–91; even observations about some opponents in Ruse, "Design," 210–11), the broader conception of design in the universe remains a live issue of discussion in philosophy (for design of universal constants, see discussion in, e.g., Spitzer,

Proofs, 45–46, 50, 57–68, 73–74).

38. See discussion in Spitzer, Proofs, 13–74. For ancient precedents, this modern approach seems closer to the Stoic logos mentioned above than to the Platonic demiurge or ideal forms. Georges Lemaître, both priest and physicist, inferred the big bang from relativity and persuaded others, including Einstein; but he distinguished the scientific theory from metaphysical interpretations of it (Krauss, "Religion,"

147–48). Most theologians envision a unique creation event. Some, like Aquinas, could reconcile an eternal universe to creation (as in Giberson and Artigas, Oracles, 105–6); but this approach would not be as demanding of such an explanation.

39. For such universes, cf., e.g., discussion in Barrow and Tipler, Principle, 472–509; cf. Leslie, Universes.

As Spitzer, Proofs, 45–46, notes, the alternatives remain fine-tuning or vast numbers of universes.

40. Often noted, e.g., in Murphy, "Apologetics," 113; Polkinghorne, "Universe," 114; on lack of empirical support, see also Turner, "Multiverse." See especially the argument of Gordon, "Cosmology," emphasizing the speculative metaphysical character of the multiverse approach.

41. See Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 13, decrying it as "not science" and "a metaphysical guess"

(also 45: "not a scientific argument"). Of course, any cosmological inferences diverge from strict, positivist empiricism, but there is not yet observational support for even a single other universe. Polkinghorne in Frankenberry, Faith, 347, notes that both alternatives (multiple universes and theistic design) are equally metaphysical.

42. Again, cf. Leslie, Universes; Davies, "Effectiveness," 52–53; idem, Mind, 220; Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 13, 45 (citing also Stephen Hawking's earlier critique, though Hawking has more recently used such an approach to deem the need for a Creator superfluous); Polkinghorne in Frankenberry, Faith,

347; Collins, "Argument," 256–72; idem, "Hypothesis"; Folger, "Alternative." See also Polkinghorne

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

one does not rule out the existence of a single intelligent source like the God of most theists, theism offers a particularly useful rational explanation. One might argue the same even on hypotheses regarding multiple universes, though theistic philosophic discussion on that subject currently remains preliminary.43

Allowing for the possibility of such intelligence is by no means foreign to the modern philosophy of science. To take just two examples, Arno Penzias, whose

1964 confirmation of the big bang led to a Nobel Prize, has pondered the possibility that, based on scientific observations, a "supernatural" plan appears likelier than some bizarrely improbable coincidence.44 Another Nobel Prize winner, John

Eccles, has argued that from the big bang to evolution, there seems "a purpose in it all."45 I cite such discussions not to attempt to prove theism, but to suggest that approaches that presuppose the nonexistence of deity work from premises not universally shared, and hence do not genuinely engage public discourse. If with most theists one attributes the origin of the universe to divine causation, one can argue by analogy a fortiori that divine activity on a smaller scale, even in events and Beale, Questions, 46 (and identically 105): "If you are allowed to posit 10500 other universes [the minimum necessary] to explain away otherwise inconvenient observations, you can 'explain away' anything, and science becomes impossible." Gordon, "Cosmology," 98, notes that the 10500 estimate could be too small. Spitzer, Proofs, 58, 68 (following esp. Penrose, Mind, 343), notes that the necessary number of nonobserved universes needed to explain the one observed universe would be represented by ten to the tenth to the one-hundred-twenty-third power; if the Occam's razor principle of parsimony is applicable to any explanation, it should apply to this one (cf. Spitzer, Proofs, 69–70). Against the scientific tenability of Dawkins's cosmological natural selection, see Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 106–11. McGrath,

Universe, 124, notes problems in the multiverse hypothesis, and that it has been too eagerly adopted by some atheists in seeking to resist the suggestion of the universe's fine-tuning. Some argue that parameters of the discussion rather than a single set of equations inform the M-theory in Hawking and Mlodinow,

"Theory," for which many solutions remain possible.

43. For the necessity of a beginning for any universe or multiverse, see discussion in Spitzer, Proofs,

33–43 (noting developments beyond the Hartle-Hawking model, esp. the Borde-Vilenkin-Guth Theorem); for fine-tuning in any case, cf. Gordon, "Cosmology," 82. McGrath, Universe, 124, suggests that if it is correct, it could still support a theistic explanation. Rather than explaining the design of physics that permits existence, it simply defers the question by another level. Some even treat chance as a divine means of producing desired outcomes. On one side, the vaster the cosmos, the greater the odds some grant for our existence by chance; on the other, our specific location as observers and our own internal role as perceiving identities (a side of reality some worldviews neglect, though their possessors cannot) seems significant, because the odds of us existing as particular self-conscious observers become closer to infinitesimal (on self-consciousness, see, e.g., Polkinghorne, Reality, 41–46, 51–57). At the age of nine,

I thought I could explain the universe without recourse to the hypothesis of a god, but soon realized I could not explain my identity; at thirteen, reading Plato, I thought I could formulate an explanation for my identity or significance but failed to explain the rest of the universe. Only in theism did I later find a compelling and coherent explanation for both internal and external reality.

44. Penzias, "Creation," 78, 83; he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1978, and at the time of this article was vice president for research at AT&T Bell Laboratories. That this remains his view is clear from Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 110n82 and idem, Resurrection, 157n86, citing confirmation through personal correspondence from Arno Penzias (July 24, 2002). On my request for verification,

Licona provided me the correspondence. Spitzer, Proofs, 49, lists various physicists (including Penzias,

Roger Penrose, and Fred Hoyle) in support of "a designing intelligence."

45. Eccles, "Design," 161 (Nobel Prize in 1963).

Are Miracles Possible?

involving the creation of new matter/energy, is a priori plausible.46 But Spinoza's naturalism helped set the default approach for later naturalistic methodology and the conclusions it was designed to achieve.

Hume and the Philosophy of Science Despite the roles of Spinoza and others, the most influential voice contributing to the long-standing modern prejudice against miracles was undoubtedly eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume (1711–76). His argument did not, however, achieve this "canonical" role immediately. Whereas the rise of critical historiography vitiated what his contemporaries viewed as his primary academic contributions (as a historian), founders of Anglophone analytic philosophy exalted Hume as one of their philosophic forebears, increasing the influence of his philosophic essays.47

Hume's philosophic work generated far less interest in his day than it has posthumously, and even his specific work on miracles was not considered very original, being influenced by Spinoza, deists, and others.48 In the late 1720s, perhaps thirty thousand copies of William Woolston's tract against miracles were printed and more than sixty replies by his detractors published.49 Moreover, deism was a dominant philosophic challenge in Hume's era;50 although not largely influential in the broader society,51 deists were the first conspicuous movement in the history of Christendom to (often) deny biblical miracles.52 Even a number of early deists,

46. See here especially Breggen, "Miracle Reports," 212–376. After noting "intimations" of design in the universe's fine-tuning (212–304) and concluding that a transcendent intelligent cause is reasonable

(302, 304), he defines the universe as "a miracle writ large" (317–23) and shows how this perspective

"enhances the plausibility of miracles writ small" (323–74). Where evidence supports particular small-scale miracles, the hypothesis of miracle is rendered more plausible by this analogy (375, 376).

47. Tucker, "Miracles," 374 (noting the influence of Russell and Ayer). Tucker complains (ibid.) that Hume's approach to miracles shares the precritical, "pre-scientific, indeed ahistorical," approach found in his historiography.

48. Brown, Miracles, 79; Beckwith, Argument, 23; for his context on miracles, see further Earman,

Failure, 14–20; Burns, Debate, esp. 9–10, 70–95.

49. Burns, Debate, 10. Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious elicited more than 115 replies (Manschreck,

History, 221).

50. On the god of deism, see Barbour, Religion and Science, 36–38; on deism as a new religion, see

Spickard and Cragg, Global History, 242; for deism on miracles, see Craig, Faith, 128–30 (for historic

Christian responses, see 132–34); Brown, Miracles, 47–77 (including early deism's hostility toward church and Bible, 48); Lawton, Miracles, 26–45; Okello, Case, 110–17 (critiquing it on 99–127); cf.

Grenz and Olson, Theology, 23; for a nuanced but brief history of deism, see Brown, Philosophy, 74–81

(from positive early deists to the more skeptical forms, and Christian responses to the latter). Deism was incompatible with the biblical worldview, in which "God reveals Himself in history, not merely in nature" (Lawton, Miracles, 192). For the struggle between deism and Christianity regarding miracles, see Cragg, Reason, 160–67. As a parasitic faith feeding on both skepticism and orthodoxy, while attacking them, deism inevitably faltered (Brown, Miracles, 77). In its heyday, however, its influence far outweighed the number of its adherents (Popkin, "Deism," 27).

51. See Nichols, History, 99–101, noting its primary failure was as "a substitute faith" (101).

52. Richardson, Apologetics, 158; on their rational religion tending to distance God apart from creation and providence, note also Smart, Experience, 471.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

however, argued not against miracles but against their use in Christian apologetic defending special revelation, which assaulted deist premises.53 Although Hume was apparently not a deist himself,54 deism provides part of the context of thought he had to address; many of Hume's specific arguments were developed first in deism's polemic against Christian miracles.55 Whatever his personal opinions at some points in his life, some of his arguments in this essay reflect the worldview promulgated by deism.56

Although his style was much superior to that of his predecessors, Hume often recycled old arguments of earlier deists without modifying them to anticipate the many critiques that had already been leveled against them by their opponents.57 Hume was thus a latecomer to the discussion, and in his day the notoriety achieved by Conyers Middleton's work, published at almost the same time as Hume's, thoroughly overshadowed that of his own essay.58 (Some scholars believe that the polemical tone of his Enquiry essay was precisely an attempt to provoke attention, without which it would be as neglected as his

Treatise.59) Nevertheless, partly as a result of his fame in other areas, Hume is generally regarded today as the starting point for modern discussion of miracles.60 Hume provided the basis for most Enlightenment arguments against 53. Burns, Debate, 70. Eighteenth-century deists, including Toland and Tindal, differed, however, from later philosophic deism (Tennant, Miracle, 7, 96–97; cf. Nichols, History, 100), and some (again including

Tindal and Toland) affirmed miracles (Burns, Debate, 14); thus, for example, John Toland (1670–1722) found nt miracles more plausible than ot ones (Loos, Miracles, 13).

54. Hume disclaimed the title of deist (from a testimonial anecdote about Hume cited in Fosl, "Hume,"

171, 188n23), and some of his arguments undermined not only monotheistic orthodoxies but also deism

(Fosl, "Hume," 174; González, Story, 2:190; Heimann, "Enlightenment," 476; Manschreck, History,

221–22).

55. See Brown, Miracles, 52–53, noting that Hume was simply more reserved than deists about targeting the Gospel miracles specifically.

56. Some associate him with "attenuated deism" or a modern Epicureanism (see Brown, Thought,

256). In section 11 of his Enquiry, many argue that Hume grudgingly accepts a Creator, based on design in nature, without knowledge of such entities' personal attributes (see Weintraub, "Credibility," 373).

Others suggest that Hume echoes Epicurean arguments against design, with the possibility of design being a concession (Smith, "Introduction," 51–53, 57–59, 64). While Epicureans' view of nature was more random (Lucretius Nat. 1.958–1115; rejecting the intelligent design that many others construed as obvious, e.g., Dio Chrysostom Or. 12.37; Cicero Nat. d. 1.9.21–22), their view of deities unknowable apart from nature (Lucretius Nat. 2.646–51) and unconcerned with nature (Nat. 2.646–51, 1090–1104; also Lucian Indictment 2; Sextus Empiricus Pyr. 3.218; cf. Furley, "Epicurus," 533; Long, Philosophy, 41) would be familiar.

57. Burns, Debate, 141. For the deists' arguments so similar to Hume's, see ibid., 70–95; for the responses of their detractors, see 96–130.

58. Ibid., 10 (noting Hume's embittered complaints).

59. Hume sought to achieve greater notoriety through this essay, and some (Taylor, Hume, 2–4, 19–20; some writers noted positively in Burns, Debate, 10, 140) suggest that he wrote it even to provoke attention.

Many features of his essay, technically irrelevant to the logic, make sense only as polemic (Taylor, Hume,

22–23, emphasizing the attention-getting value on 23).

60. Williams, Miraculous, 19, 24; Twelftree, Miracle Worker, 39–40; Collins, God of Miracles, 148; cf.

Keller, Miracles, 48–66.

Are Miracles Possible?

apologetic use of miracle reports,61 and many modern arguments simply restate Hume's earlier claims.62

"Enlightenment" thinkers did not all follow Hume, however, and his Enlightenment predecessors found nothing in empiricism that entailed his conclusions.63

In contrast to Hume, his predecessor John Locke (1632–1704), "the founder of eighteenth-century empiricism," affirmed the possibility of God-wrought miracles and viewed them as compatible with reason.64 Hume's echoes of Locke even suggest that he was dialoguing with Locke's position;65 like some of his contemporaries,

Locke appealed to biblical miracles to authenticate Christianity,66 the very position that Hume wished to challenge. (Although their arguments are articulated in a more nuanced way today, many theistic scholars continue to appeal to miracles as evidence of divine activity.67) It was reaction against this increased Christian apologetic from miracles, rather than a natural development from scientists' empiricism, that led to a counteroffensive against miracle claims.68 In fact, this movement of apologetic theology that Hume opposed was closely tied with the very movement that spawned England's

61. Houston, Miracles, 3; cf. Harrison, "Miracles," 508–9 (for natural philosophers' use of miracles in apologetics, see 504–8). Today Hume's view is sometimes simply taken for granted. Thus, e.g.,

Lüdemann, Two Thousand Years, 4: "those actions are unhistorical which presuppose that the laws of nature are broken"; cf. similarly Hans Küng's position in Grenz and Olson, Theology, 270. Theological arguments against miracles usually depend ultimately on Hume and his successors (Houston, Miracles,

102). Houston (210–20) cites Pannenberg's arguments for the resurrection against philosophic premises to the contrary, but notes that (220–23) because Pannenberg does not address some of Hume's arguments, Houston does so for him.

62. As pointed out by Johnson, Hume, 76–78, in addressing one modern restatement of Hume's case.

63. His view was eccentric among major Enlightenment thinkers of his day (Dembski, Design, 59).

64. Melinsky, Miracles, 45–47 (quote from 47; noting Locke's contrast to Spinoza on 45); Zachman,

"Meaning," 5–6; Houston, Miracles, 33–48; Brown, Philosophy, 63–64; Okello, Case, 91–95. Locke used a cosmological argument for God's existence (Wolterstorff, "Theology and Science," 98) and even thought a good case could be made for the nt's infallibility (ibid.). Some challenge Locke's miracles argument

(Mooney and Imbrosciano, "Case").

65. Houston, Miracles, 50; Earman, Failure, 14–15.

66. Burns, Debate, 57–69; McKenzie, "Miracles," 79; Mullin, "Bushnell," 462; Brown, Miracles, 42–46

(qualifying the particulars on 55). Although not supporting postbiblical miracles (Mullin, "Bushnell," 462),

Locke, with some other Enlightenment thinkers, also offered strong arguments for the value of testimony

(Kennedy, "Miracles," 11–14), a point from which Hume demurs (with respect to miracle claims).

67. For contemporary defenses of an appropriate use of miracles in Christian apologetics (usually as supportive, not coercively decisive, proofs), cf., e.g., Cramer, "Miracles," 137; Craig, "Review," 479–85

(i.e., they do function as evidence); Purtill, "Proofs," 50; McKenzie, "Miracles," 78–80; Jensen, "Logic,"

145; Jantzen, "Miracles," 355 (miracles can make faith more rational than non-faith); Larmer, "Evidence,"

55; Dennison, "Signs"; earlier, Trench, Miracles, 68–74. Although they are "signs" more than "proofs" (e.g.,

McKenzie, "Signs," 14–16), the latter element need not be excluded (cf. O'Connell, "Miracles," 53–54, citing Vatican I and II). Miracles can support theism for those who are open to the possibility (Ward,

"Believing," 746), at least raising its credibility (Schlesinger, "Miracles," 232) or providing part of a theistic case within a larger theistic framework (Reppert, "Miracles"; see esp. 48–49). For how religious decision can rest on historical probability without historical certainty, see Sider, "Methodology," 34–35 (addressing

Jesus's resurrection); historical epistemology by its nature involves probabilities, not mathematical certitude

(O'Connell, "Miracles," 57).

68. See Burns, Debate, 12, 69.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

scientific revolution.69 The moderate empiricists who led that revolution were often even the evidentialist apologists against whose sort of reasoning Hume contended.70

Thus, for example, Robert Boyle (1627–91), often known as the father of chemistry, advanced miracles as one of the major arguments for Christianity.71 Hume worked from premises that the scientific movement had repudiated; despite his ambivalence toward Pyrrhonian skepticism, for example, he "was the only major

British thinker to have been deeply and directly influenced by it."72

Dartmouth professor Nancy Frankenberry points out "how seamlessly the historical titans of the scientific revolution—Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Pascal, and Newton—all devout believers to a man—could interrelate their Christian faith and their scientific discoveries."73 Skepticism arose not from empirical data or science per se but from particular philosophers. The naturalism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not deterministic and did not exclude all divine causes; the tendencies that led to an emphasis on pure mechanism "were as much political and theological as philosophical,"74 reflecting especially the polemic between Protestant and Catholic theologians with their respective political constituencies.75 Empiricism itself is neutral regarding God's existence and activity, and had been used by those who supported traditional belief in miracles as well as by those who opposed it. It is thus not the basic empirical approach per se but Hume's a priori exclusion of God as a plausible cause that drives his argument.

Early Enlightenment scientific thinkers drew from natural law very different and no less logically arguable conclusions. Thus, for example, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, and others envisioned laws in nature "only because there had been a 69. Ibid., 12, 19. Both grew in the liberal Latitudinarian movement dominant in early eighteenth-century

Anglicanism (ibid., 14). Burns (37–43) even argues that the Latitudinarians provided the theological and philosophic basis for the Royal Society's scientific endeavors (against the fideism of some other contemporary Christian movements).

70. See ibid., 47–69.

71. Ibid., 18, 53 (cf. 51–57); MacIntosh and Anstey, "Boyle."

72. Burns, Debate, 28–29 (quotation from 28; cf. 238–39, 242). This is not to question Hume's respect for scientific thinkers like Newton; it was a respect, however, that also characterized most of Hume's contemporaries (see Burns, Debate, 181).

73. Frankenberry, Faith, ix. The devoutness of the founders of English science is also noted by Gould,

Rocks (as cited in Frankenberry, Faith, 256).

74. Daston, "Facts," 113. Deists of this period did not so much emphasize the mechanistic worldview, which was neutral with regard to divine miracles (Burns, Debate, 83; cf. 247).

75. See Daston, "Facts," 114–23. Hume sought to appeal to Protestant antipathy toward Catholic miracles and even to Protestant sentiments against transubstantiation. Scarre, "Tillotson," 53, suggests that Hume adapted John Tillotson's argument against transubstantiation (Hume, Miracles, 24), though

Tillotson did not say what Hume does (Fogelin, Defense, 67, 89n2) and himself accepted miracle testimony (Mullin, "Bushnell," 462, in fact, notes that Tillotson used miracles apologetically). Levine, "Belief"

(esp. 154–57; cf. idem, Problem, 103–22) shows the similarity of Hume's argument to Tillotson (despite

Hume's misrepresentation of Tillotson, to whose argument he presents his argument as similar, e.g., 126,

133; perhaps he intends only a general similarity [cf. Fogelin, Defense, 67]) and the failure of Hume's argument. Some think his mention of Tillotson sarcastic (Burns, Debate, 138, 144); Tillotson belonged to the Latitudinarian movement (ibid., 14, 40–43) that supported miracles.

Are Miracles Possible?

Legislator," and expressly insisted "that God was free to change them."76 He77 could control natural events more readily than humans control their limbs.78 Newton's strictest disciples resisted deism79 for two centuries, never doubting miracles;

Newton held that "laws of nature" were "sustained by—rather than autonomous from—the continuous active power of God."80 Because, in contrast to deists,

Newton and his followers believed that God was still active,81 their commitment to special providence in history alongside general providence in nature allowed for miracles.82 Miracles were excluded only when God worked through his "ordinary

'laws,'" and among Hume's contemporaries only deists insisted that God always worked through such laws.83 In contrast to most of his contemporaries, Hume

76. Brooke, "Science," 9; cf. idem, Science, 118. Most theists today likewise see such laws as subject to God's will and thus adapted by him when needed (Purtill, "Defining," 38). Boyle even resisted the language of "laws of nature" because it seemed to allow nature's autonomy from the Creator (Sharp, "Miracles," 11).

By contrast, some nontheists dislike the conception of "laws" of nature because they believe it connotes a legislator (e.g., Harré, Introduction, 107, as cited in Sharp, "Miracles," 6).

77. As with many other authors (e.g., Davies, Mind, 17), my use of the masculine pronoun defers to the literary convention of historic monotheistic traditions, including those in which the scientists cited above stood, rather than entering a theological debate regarding divine gender. With most theologians today, I do not regard biological gender as a category applicable to the Supreme Being.

78. Brooke, "Science," 9. It was partly for theological reasons that Newton argued that matter was inert, in order to underline the distinction between creature and Creator (Murphy, "Apologetics," 116). For Boyle's views on God's active relation to the mechanical world (though partly to keep it from collapsing, and his cosmos resembles that of the deism he rejected), see Burtt, Foundations, 194–202; cf. also Daston,

"Facts," 122; Burns, Debate, 16–17, 21–24; Osler, "Revolution," 94. It was primarily theologians seeking to undermine rival churches' claims rather than early scientists who pioneered challenges to miracle claims

(Brown, Miracles, 23–24).

79. A key point at which theists demur from deists is that theists insist on God's conservation or sustenance of what God created (Quinn, "Conservation," 50; cf. earlier Trench, Miracles, 7). This perspective has been articulated in various forms (e.g., Freddoso, "Aristotelianism"), including a range of involvement from a sort of continuous creation (in a moderate form, see Kvanvig and McCann, "Conservation"; disagreeing, e.g., Quinn, "Conservation," 71) to God having established the norms of nature and merely redirecting events when needed (perhaps more common among those theologians focused on science).

While philosophical theists at different points on this range would understand miracles in various ways, the entire range in principle allows for the sort of events that believers call miracles.

80. Wykstra, "Problem," 156. For the universe's necessary dependence on God's will in Newton's thought, see, e.g., Force, "Dominion," 89, 91; idem, "Breakdown," 146; Frankenberry, Faith, 105. While focusing on efficient causes, Newton explicitly embraced deity as a final cause (Osler, "Revolution," 95).

Even Spencer felt that nature's mechanistic function required Deity to sustain it (Daston, "Facts," 112).

Others, like Descartes and Leibniz, retorted that the Creator established the principles already in nature for its continuance (Frankenberry, Faith, 105–6). The synthesis between science and religion effected by Newton and others (note the Royal Society from 1662 to 1741, Force, "Breakdown," 144–51) came under increasing challenge from radical deists ca. 1720 to 1741 (Force, "Breakdown," 143). Deists' rationalistic approach to "law" as "an all-pervading, unconditional, immutable necessity" has long been discredited

(Tennant, Miracle, 13).

81. Force, "Breakdown," 146. Newton's approach was the antithesis of deism; he rejected both the lifeless mechanical universe and the clockwork image (Davis, "Cosmology," 115, 121). The opposite modern popular conception of Newton originated as propaganda by later, eighteenth-century French philosophes (121).

82. Force, "Breakdown," 147–50; see also Frankenberry, Faith, ix.

83. Wykstra, "Problem," 156.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

critiqued the Newtonian synthesis of general and special providence.84 I will give further attention below to Hume's approach to natural law and his antitheistic starting point. Excluding God or other supernatural forces from consideration leaves only nature, but this exclusion rises from a fiat of definition and is not a neutral premise.

Much of the antisupernatural empiricist case against earlier supernaturalist worldviews rested on philosophic premises that have since been abandoned in light of subsequent scientific and philosophic developments.85 Thus, as physics professor Stephen Barr observes, a century ago physics was entirely materialistic and deterministic86 and faulted religion for suggesting that the physical universe was not "causally closed." Unexpectedly, however, "that determinism did in fact give way in the face of new discoveries," and it was traditional religion rather than the physics of the era that made the successful prediction about the nature of the universe.87 Science normally validates theories based on successful predictions.

Not surprisingly, then, theism has become a more respected explanation among many physicists and cosmologists.88 This observation is not intended to imply that there is or can be absolute or permanent consensus on all details of cosmology,

84. Force, "Breakdown," 151–56. Hume attacked both general (152–53) and special (153–56) providence.

85. Williams, Miraculous, 137–57, 205. He offers a philosophic challenge to antisupernaturalism

(158–202). Williams himself uses "magnetism" and spiritist phenomena to insist on the inadequacy of materialist explanations, arguing that the evidence is cumulatively compelling (54–131, esp. 82–83,

131); I find such positive arguments less compelling, however, than his challenge to antisupernaturalism as a mere a priori.

86. Meanwhile, those who affirmed determinism rarely considered their views determined (Jaki,

Miracles and Physics, 42–43). Against deterministic approaches, see, e.g., Barrow and Tipler, Principle,

138–39. At most, fundamental laws might be determined (Loewer, "Determinism," 335–36).

87. Barr, Physics and Faith, 253. The claims that the universe is finite and had a beginning fall into the same category (against earlier naturalism's predictions); cf., e.g., Collins, Language of God, 66–84 (note that Collins's synthesis of science and faith is widely respected in the scientific community; Ecklund,

Science, 46–47); Ramm, View, 104–7. The success or failure of predictions is important in scientific testing and revision of hypotheses. On an uncritical bias toward materialism in many traditional circles, see, e.g., Beauregard and O'Leary, Brain, 93–94 (though there appear to be problems with their approach as well); Barbour, Religion and Science, 78–82; cf. Peat, "Science"; a "moderate" "physicalism" in McDermid, "Miracles" (rejecting complete causal closure in the physical realm). On an approach other than pure naturalism and blind chance in origin-of-life issues, though with different views of life formation after the first functioning organism, see, e.g., careful discussions in Behe, Box (e.g., 26–48,

168–69, 185–231); Templeton, "Introduction," 12–20; Rana and Ross, Origins (though cf. the caution for these approaches in Collins, Language of God, 92–93); more modestly, McGrath, Universe, 127–42; briefly, Roth, "Piling," 199; for cosmic design arguments' role in converting a leading philosophic atheist to deism, see Flew, God, 95–154 (concerns about the challenges of the new cosmological consensus to conventional atheism already seem evident in, e.g., Flew, "Response," 241). Many scientists concur (e.g.,

Becker, "Laws"). Rothschild, "Emergence in Biology," 161–64, suggests that many unresolved biological questions, such as the origin of self-replication or of the cell, might be explained by emergence. But note further discussion below.

88. See, e.g., the shift in thinking of Fred Hoyle in Gingerich, "Scientist," 24–25; Davies, "Effectiveness,"

48–49 (for his unusual advocacy of panspermia, see Herrick, Mythologies, 226–29). Some were already arguing for such a shift, perhaps overoptimistically, more than a century ago (e.g., Wright, "Miracles,"

186–87, envisioning the "spiritual" as a ground for the physical).

Are Miracles Possible?

but to argue that one should not simply presuppose atheism and a priori rule out theistic readings of the evidence, such as appear later in this book.89

Natural philosophers working from the perspectives of contemporary physics, unbound from determinism, typically emphasize freedom over strict causality.90

What this should mean, however, is that the traditional deist compromise with a mechanistic universe is no longer necessary, if it ever was;91 if a Creator exists, there is no reason to argue against divine intervention, or, in less problematic language, activity as an agent. One's starting premises about atheism, deism, or theism will therefore shape one's conclusions.

Does Science Pronounce on Theology?

Those today who claim that science or historiography denies the possibility of miracles are repeating not scientific observations but philosophic premises stemming from Hume.92 Many repeat his eighteenth-century arguments without recognizing how weak they sound if one rereads them from the standpoint of what we know today.93 Examining the philosophic underpinnings of these modern assumptions is important, since those who reject the possibility of miracles often assume that they are working on the basis of scientific discovery, when in fact the issue is one of the philosophy of science rather than empirical data per se.94 While

89. Thus new theories and arguments regularly arise; while the mere existence of a counterargument does not necessarily make it plausible, I must concede that this is not my discipline, and it is much easier to appeal to respect for specifically theistic or deistic explanations in physical cosmology than in biological sciences. Problems in the latter case may arise partly because some (albeit not all) theists have unnecessarily framed their biological arguments as against evolution as broadly defined, when only an inflexibly and always purposeless evolution is necessarily problematic for conventional theism (cf. e.g., Plantinga, "Science," 107,

114–16, 121). Problems may also arise partly because many interpreters want a theistic explanation to organize all details (e.g., "junk DNA" and harmful mutations) rather than simply particular extraordinary outcomes (e.g., human mathematical reasoning); yet many interpreters find God even in Scripture managing or arranging for particular outcomes rather than directly scripting all details of even human existence (e.g., few would argue that God directly scripts sin). In any case, a minimal conclusion is all that is necessary: while definitions of consensus change, this observation no more demands atheism than theism. Even a philosophic stalemate should be sufficient to invite hearers to consider specific evidence offered in particular historical cases (some of which appears later in this book and elsewhere).

90. E.g., Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 31–34, 42–43; cf. Davies, "Downward Causation," 46–47.

It should be noted, however, that many theological uses of quantum physics (from supporting free will to supporting Buddhism) read too much into the theory (see Thurs, "Quantum Physics").

91. On the implications for theology of strict determinism's demise, see Gwynne, Action, 205–21,

322. Even for Newton and the Newtonians, a mechanistic universe in general was compatible with the Creator's altering that mechanism where useful, allowing for past and (rarely) present miracles (Force,

"Breakdown," 146).

92. Houston, Miracles, 4.

93. For some of Hume's own admissions of weakness in the logic of his philosophy, see Jaki, Miracles and Physics, 19–21; for one harsh attack on Hume's logic today, see Earman, Failure. For Hume's argument in its historical context, see, e.g., Schulz, "Ende" (critiquing Hume).

94. On the heavy reliance on interpretive structures as well as data in the common practice of science, see, e.g., Kuhn, Structure; Popper, Myth of Framework. For example, questions like the meaning and purpose of the universe are often seen as philosophic questions rather than simply matters of data (a view noted in Russell, "T = 0," 209; cf. ibid., 221); "meaning" (in the sense of organized, complex information) "is

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

the scientific method accumulates information, its approach is ideally supposed to involve experimenting with new conjectures rather than defending old ones.

Science per se is not closed to exploring different explanatory models,95 and the possibility of supernatural causation is a question of interpretation as well as of data.

Scientists are experts about the normal happenings of nature, but when asking whether something outside the norm happens, they no longer speak as scientists per se, because how to address anomalies or metanormal phenomena is a philosophic question.96 Thus, for example, one scientist who rejects miracles acknowledges that his reasons are essentially theological rather than scientific: he concedes that a God could "break his own laws," but this scientist is "repelled by the idea" that God would do so as special revelation in history.97 (Apart from his subjective or perhaps culturally formed sense, he offers no reasons why this idea should seem repulsive.) To state the matter somewhat differently, the question of whether there can be exceptions to natural law "is," as Houston puts it, "a philosophical rather than a narrowly scientific issue."98 Some suggest that the belief of a number of scientists

(the proportion varying from one field to another) in an active deity illustrates well enough that the question need not be viewed as strictly one of science per se.99

Science as science involves repeatable events, so it normally cannot as science pronounce judgment on specific, unique100 events in history, such as many distributed over systems," so that no element is "self-interpreting" (Puddefoot, "Information Theory," 301; on "meaning-information," see further 304–5, 309–11). Though human intellect and moral theory might appear irreconcilable with amoral physical reality, interface may be possible at a more complex level of exploration (cf. Graham, "Materialism").

95. See Popper, Myth of Framework, 201–2; cf. idem, Conjectures, 33–65.

96. Cf. idem, Myth of Framework, 71–72, who complains about scientific specialists trained only at the technical level rather than to think about larger questions (cf. earlier Wright, Miracle, 124, on the limits of science's descriptive role). At the same time, I suspect that scientists themselves can hardly be faulted for this situation: I suspect that in science even more than in my own discipline, the multiplication of knowledge makes adequate mastery even of one's "specialization" difficult. Cf. Kuhn, Structure, 64:

"professionalization leads . . . to an immense restriction of the scientist's vision and to a considerable resistance to paradigm change." Specialization allows for immense accumulation of particular knowledge, but its restricted vision allows forms of (and arguments for) knowledge to fall between the cracks of specialties (cf. Taylor, Hume, 52–53).

97. Mott, "Science," 66, acknowledging that science itself does not directly inform his preference.

98. Houston, Miracles, 123. On the respective domains of science and philosophy here, cf. also

Flew, God, 89–90. William Paley rightly responded to Hume that "any argument of miracles being

'contrary to general experience' is but a begging of the question" (summarized in Melinsky, Miracles, 50, though Melinsky himself is skeptical of most of Paley's position on 52). Wolterstorff, "Theology and Science," 99, suggests that most serious conflicts between "science" and "religion" arise from "control beliefs," the convictions determining "the sorts of theories that we will find acceptable" (cf. also Murphy,

"Apologetics," 115–17).

99. Cf. Jaki, Miracles and Physics, 15. I do not mean that the proportion or presence of a view's adherents functions as a criterion of truth (diverse perspectives also exist among philosophers of science, where the question of a deity's activity is more at home than in science per se); nor do I deny that scientists on average hold theistic views less often than the general population. My point here is that application of the scientific method is not impaired by belief that there are exceptions to the expectations of pure naturalism.

100. Cf. Polkinghorne in Frankenberry, Faith, 344. Technically miracles are not unique in kind if other miracles occur; they are unique, however, in the sense in which given actions of a human person

Are Miracles Possible?

define miracles to be.101 Among past events, the big bang102 and current observations of past events in the history of the universe are exceptions, but these are large-scale events rather than the less predictable details of history and human life.103 Thus the questions that students of nature ask differ from those asked by historians investigating particular events involving intelligent (usually human) causation,104 and those of philosophers who address logical possibilities. Since science works inductively from details to larger patterns, it looks for larger patterns and cannot address single anomalies like miracles.105 In principle, examination of enough miracles could produce some discernible patterns as well.106 Nevertheless, such patterns could not be scientifically formulated if the supernatural actor is a personal being;107 personal agents operate on a higher and less predictable108 level of complexity than mathematical predictability in the basic principles of physics.

Few scholars are more qualified to articulate this distinction between scientific and theological approaches to the discussion of miracles than Sir John

Polkinghorne. An Anglican priest, he is also former professor of mathematical are unique: potentially recurrent, but not repeatable in the sense of predictable. That is the stuff of history and psychology; it is not the stuff of physics or biology.

101. Charlesworth, "Resurrection," 170; Ward, "Believing," 746–47; Polkinghorne, Physics, 34–35;

Gorsuch, "Limits," 284; cf. Ramsey, "Miracles," 8.

102. See Tucker, Knowledge, 244.

103. Some question whether cosmological questions like the big bang are strictly scientific (Segre,

"Origin," 109); technically they involve significant interpretation, but whether one regards them as scientific depends on how one defines science (an observation relevant to our discussion). Like history, paleontology addresses nonrepeatable events based on other kinds of evidence and analogy (cf. Polkinghorne, Physics, 9).

104. Human agents' options are constrained by physics and biology, but within their constraints operate on a higher and less predictable level of complexity than the general patterns of physics and biology. If one avers the existence of an ultimate Creator and/or infinite being, that being would not be subject to natural

"law," and could constitute a far more "free" agent of intelligent causation than humans are. Even if the mind is wholly dependent on the brain, its states cannot be predicted as more than probabilities (Margenau,

"Laws," 59–60); still less ought we suppose an intelligence not dependent on nature to be determined by it.

105. Wills, "Miracles," 144; cf. Gorsuch, "Limits," 284. Pure science is inductive and thus does not rule on metaphysical possibilities (Tonquédec, Miracles, 69; cf. Ellens, "God and Science," 5); it may extrapolate from known cases or work deductively from mathematical principles, but neither excludes the possibility of specific divine action.

106. So Wills, "Miracles," 144. Patterns might be discerned at least in the sense that one notes miracles more in some circumstances than others.

107. Note this observation in Ward, "Believing," 747.

108. Thus historiography, focused on persons, treats specific events more than laws that are universally applicable under particular conditions (Popper, Historicism, 143). Among empiricists, the greater difficulty of establishing "laws" regarding human behavior predicting individuals' behavior (vis-à-vis "nature") was already recognized by Locke (Burns, Debate, 63). Wigner, "Relativity," 277–78, suggests that "life," unlike the rest of the universe, has not yet been readily explained in terms of basic principles of physics (for the advanced, organized complexity in biological systems, see, e.g., Davies, Mind, 138). Human intelligence would be even less predictable. Although not predictable, a feature common in biblical claims of God's extranatural activity is God's self-revelation (hence a particular kind a theological context), e.g., attesting Christ or his message in contexts lacking sufficient insight about him. See earlier Mozley, Lectures, 129–30: various orders of existence (matter, vegetation, animals, and humans) operate with increasing laws of complexity, and there is no reason to exclude a still higher, divine sphere beyond our own level of direct cognizance.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

physics at Cambridge, president of Queens' College at Cambridge, and 2002 recipient of the Templeton Prize. Because the Christian notion of miracle by definition involves divine causation, it is, he argues, a theological rather than

"primarily scientific" issue. "Science simply tells us that these events are against normal expectation. We knew this at the start. Science cannot exclude the possibility that, on particular occasions, God does particular, unprecedented things.

After all, God is the ordainer of the laws of nature, not someone who is subject to them." God is consistent with the patterns that God established in nature, but "consistency is not the same as dreary uniformity. In unprecedented circumstances, God can do unexpected things."109 The "unexpected things" are not the predictable stuff of science, but neither are they inimical to the normal, predictable stuff of science.110

As Polkinghorne and others also note, theistic religion and science do overlap in interests, but they often ask different questions.111 As suggested earlier, this difference does not mean that questions of causation become illegitimate when the causes might be intelligent ones, whether in history (e.g., conquests or inven109. Polkinghorne, Quarks, 100 (I am grateful to Michael Licona for bringing this reference to my attention); similarly, Polkinghorne, Way, 56; idem, Physics, 34; the quotation in Frankenberry, Faith, 363.

On God's freedom from laws he created, see, e.g., Helm, "Miraculous," 93 (against Leibniz). There is no inconsistency in arguing that God both works through the ordinary course of nature and sometimes alters it for special reasons, or works through it in specially communicative ways (cf. Alston, "Action," 60–61, on miracles), any more than it is inconsistent for other intelligent agents to intervene selectively. In Scripture itself, God is active not only in "ordinary" ways (cf. discussion in Collins, God of Miracles, 107–19) but also in extraordinary ones (cf. 87–106, on "special divine action"). Nearly a century ago, F. R. Tennant of Cambridge noted that even human individuality can appear like "uniformity" because "statistical averages have constancy," and that "uniformity" may thus be "approximate and non-mechanical" (Miracle, 103).

110. See the interpretation of a 1989 statement of Stephen Hawking in Giberson and Artigas, Oracles,

103–4: Hawking acknowledges the possibility of God acting in ways beyond scientific laws, but his own work as a scientist can address only those ways that can be "described by scientific laws" (this seems to differ from the perspective in the 1986 interview summarized on 104–5; more recently, he has deemed a Creator superfluous). More generally, note the observations in Giberson and Artigas, Oracles, 229–32

(distinguishing philosophic naturalism from science per se), and the analogy on 233–34: an ichthyologist might insist that sea creatures are always at least two inches long, because that is what he always catches.

When a critic points out that the ichthyologist's "net is not adapted to catch" any smaller creatures, the ichthyologist might insist that anything smaller is outside consensus methodology as defined by the net, hence is unverifiable metaphysics. The problem is not lack of evidence but insistence on a methodology not suited to recover the relevant evidence. Giberson and Artigas, Oracles, primarily address renowned scientists who pronounce on metaphysical questions, generally without the requisite specifically philosophic competence to make such pronouncements.

111. See further, e.g., Polkinghorne, Belief; idem, Faith; idem, Quarks; also cf. Polkinghorne and Beale,

Questions, 8 (science dealing with how, theology dealing with why; cf. Phillips, "Science"; Schawlow,

"Why"; Bernasek, "Mechanism," 149–50). Science proper addresses one restricted area of knowledge, whereas theology as an "integrating discipline . . . sets the results of other human enquiry within the most profound and comprehensive matrix of understanding" (Polkinghorne, "Origin," 87), at least ideally

(many generalists have weaknesses too, since they may lack the specialists' understanding of relevant disciplines). The biblical tradition and science both affirm the natural order, but whereas science analyzes its data, theistic perspectives explore what can be inferred from the data about nature's creator (McGrath,

Dialogue, 208–9; idem, Science and Religion, 53–54). On the dialogue between and integration of faith and science, cf. also Padgett, "Advice," 300–307.

Are Miracles Possible?

tions) or medical science (e.g., stab wounds or a child's bruises). It does mean that competence in handling empirical data does not automatically translate into logical competence in applying the data to questions to which one is unaccustomed to asking. Because science's competence addresses physical rather than supernatural causes does not mean that it must declare the latter nonexistent,112 unless one simply assumes that the specifically methodological exclusion of supernatural causes reflects certain knowledge that there are no such causes. Many well-known scientists, in fact, have treated science and religion as complementary, both being valuable. Among them are Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Werner Heisenberg, although their specific approaches vary.113

Hume, Violations of Natural Law, and Theism Many philosophers today, though writing from various perspectives, challenge Hume's argument regarding natural law. For example, J. Houston, in a recent

Cambridge monograph, challenges at length Hume's claim "that the evidence for the relevant law(s) of nature is . . . undeniably relevant to an assessment of the probability" of alleged miracles.114 Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne also argues against Hume:

If there is no God, then the laws of nature are the ultimate determinants of what happens. But if there is a God, then whether and for how long and under what circumstances laws of nature operate depend on God. Any evidence that there is a God, and, in particular, evidence that there is a God of a kind who might be expected to intervene occasionally in the natural order will be evidence supporting historical evidence that he has done so.115

112. Ward, "Believing," 744.

113. Varghese, "Introduction," 1 (citing each; he also lists Stephen Hawking, but Hawking has now deemed the idea of a Creator superfluous). See also other science and mathematics professors in the same work, e.g., Margenau, "Laws," 57 (Emeritus Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and Natural

Philosophy, Yale); Becker, "Laws" (MIT); Favre, "Action" (Université d'Aix-Marseill); Josephson,

"Conflict" (Nobel Prize in physics, 1973); Salam, "Science" (Nobel Prize in physics, 1979); Naumann,

"Religion," 71 (Princeton); Russell, "Difficulty," 89–90 (University of Southern California); Schawlow,

"Why" (Stanford); Smith, "Universe," 111–12 (University of Oregon); Thirring, "Guidance" (University of Vienna); Townes, "Question" (Berkeley); Uhlig, "Origin" (MIT); Bernasek, "Mechanism" (Princeton);

Emmel, "Process" (University of Florida, Gainesville); Gautheret, "Spirit," 174–75 (president of the Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1979–80); see the extensive survey in Frankenberry, Faith (e.g., Einstein in 157–59, 164–68). Many view this deity as an "intelligence," sometimes demurring from a view they attribute to "the clergy," of "God as an old man with a white beard" (Little, "Planned," 55; cf. more modestly Bernasek, "Mechanism," 151; Watt, "Evidence," 224), a view not to my knowledge promoted in any of our seminaries.

114. Houston, Miracles, 133 (developed on 133–50). Hume's claim here by definition excludes miracles

(or at least the probability of them) held to contravene such laws; he thus uses a definition to fix the argument so that miracles cannot happen (or at least cannot be probably believed to happen).

115. Swinburne, "Evidence," 198 (adding that even human creatures of habit break their regularity under some circumstances). It is beyond my purview at this point to argue for a benevolent deity, but some could utilize arguments from physicists for the "anthropic" principle (see data in Barrow and Tipler, Principle, 288–575 passim; Barr, Physics and Faith, 118–57) to suggest this. (More basically, the

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

Most natural laws by definition assume a closed system; they make normal predictions but do not claim to account for influences outside the system in question.116

No one who believes in historic monotheistic understandings of God would deny the possibility of God influencing the system of nature;117 such a denial must be predicated on a prior denial of this sort of God. Yet as one philosopher observes, Hume appears to have tried to persuade readers to stop believing in miracles without the courtesy of first seeking to dissuade them of their theism.118

His rhetoric thus works better than his logic.119 No less a critic than John Stuart

Mill regarded the fruit of Hume's essay as trivial: all that Hume accomplished was to show that "if we do not already believe in supernatural agencies, no miracles can prove to us their existence."120 Some dispute whether Hume accomplished even this much.

Natural law is a classical concept (see appendix D), but Enlightenment thinkers developed it in some distinctive ways.121 Hume regarded miracles as a violation of universe appears as "biocentric"; see, e.g., Davies, Mind, 198–200 [though he gives humans a special place, 232].) Barrow and Tipler present the data from an anthropocentric teleological perspective, which can be and has long been used theistically (see Tennant, Theology, 2:113–15). Though not the approach of Barrow and Tipler, many would argue that a design perspective's infinite designer before and outside the time-space universe better explains design than an explanation predicated solely on natural entities' currently finite and evolving intelligence. A monotheistic reading of the evidence is now one among several accepted readings (see, e.g., Rolston, "Science," 63), and many support a contemporary

"design" argument (see, e.g., Murphy, "Evidence of Design"; summary in Barbour, Religion and Science,

204–6; from an earlier twentieth-century theologian, e.g., Ramm, View, 99–104). For physics' "finetuning," see, e.g., Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 13, 44–45, 99–116; McGrath, Universe, especially

111–26 (for the fine-tuning of chemistry necessary for biology to function, 127–42). Some treat the laws of physics as something like Plato's ideal forms (Davies, Mind, 73–92). For affirmations of the relevance of the anthropic principle to the question of God or suggestions of divine design in physics, see also, e.g., Margenau, "Laws," 59; Varghese, "Introduction," 20–23; Kistiakowsky, "Order"; Penzias,

"Creation," 82–83; Mott, "Science," 65; Eccles, "Design," 161–62; cf. Freeman Dyson's 2000 Templeton

Speech (in Frankenberry, Faith, 381); for physics and discussion of creation ex nihilo, see, e.g., Stoeger,

"Origin."

116. Alston, "Action," 56. Thus knowledge of how nature normally works tells us nothing about how events might occur if a supernatural entity were to intervene (Otte, "Treatment," 155–56; Collins, God of Miracles, 148).

117. If "miracles" by definition have deity as their "proximate cause," they involve no causal chain incompatible with nature's normal pattern (Gilman, "Miracles," 480–81). For Hume's false logic here, see also Gaskin, Philosophy, 121.

118. The conclusion of Burns, Debate, 246 (noting Hume's avoidance of the issue in the first part of his essay, 245). People of his status, unlike some others, had little to fear in his day for making such a prior argument, but it may not have persuaded as many, and it is not clear that Hume himself would have wished to claim so much.

119. Despite Hume's complaint about believers in miracles preferring eloquence to reason; Miracles, 36.

120. Mill, Logic, book 3, ch. 25 (as cited in Burns, Debate, 244; Kelly, "Miracle," 50).

121. Sharp, "Miracles," 4, notes that pre-Enlightenment "natural law" addressed mostly justice and morality. While this summary is somewhat too narrow, it correctly reflects the serious difference when the concept was transferred to Newton's mechanistic principles.

Are Miracles Possible?

natural law,122 in contrast to how some earlier thinkers like Augustine,123 Aquinas,124 and other theorists traditionally conceptualized them. Miracles might appear contrary to nature, Augustine concedes, but they do not appear so for God; "for him 'nature' is what he does."125 Aquinas recognized that some miracles performed what was impossible in nature but that others accomplished what nature could yet in supernatural ways; he treated the result of awe as an essential criterion for miracles.126 In historic Christian theology, miracles need not contradict natural law, and even when they do, such contradiction is peripheral to their primary character as signs of divine grace.127 For Hume to define earlier miracle claims in terms of natural law imposed anachronistic categories on them, since the idea of immutable natural laws was a recent innovation.128 Until the sixteenth century or later, miracles were not defined with regard to natural law.129 Indeed, Isaac

122. Houston, Miracles, 103. Hume shared much of this definition with some of his contemporaries, like deist Ethan Allen (Fosl, "Hume," 177); cf. John Locke, who accepted miracles but treated them as "contrary to the established course of nature" (Daston, "Facts," 117). Technically, sometimes his argument involves generalized claims entailed by laws of nature rather than such laws themselves (Fosl, "Hume," 180).

While "violation" is the issue at hand, Hume's essay in fact plays on inconsistent definitions of "miracle"

(Taylor, Hume, 7, complaining on 11 that he advances his argument only "by the illegitimate device of changing a fundamental definition" in the course of it).

123. Houston, Miracles, 104, notes that Augustine and many others spoke of miracles as above rather than against nature; Polkinghorne, Science and Providence, 47, views Augustine treating some miracles "as a kind of accelerated version of the natural"; see also and in some detail Lacey, Nature, 71–91 (esp. 84–85);

Pannenberg, "Concept"; Ward, "Believing," 742; Okello, Case, 48–52; Gousmett, "Miracle"; Slupic,

"Interpretation," 519; Hardon, "Concept," 230–31 (God acting according to nature as he established it, with miracles not contradicting his way of working); Richardson, Apologetics, 154; Culpepper, "Problem of Miracles," 215–16; Clark, "Miracles and Law," 25; Gounelle, "Théologien"; Smith, Thinking, 104–5.

Nature was miraculous, so the main difference between God's universal work and his activity in creation was the effect on the observer (Harrison, "Miracles," 495–96; cf. Lacey, Nature, 80–81). But Augustine defined "nature" more broadly than Hume, not simply in its observable regularity (Gwynne, Action,

67–68; Collins, God of Miracles, 40).

124. Hardon, "Concept," 231–34 (noting that Aquinas insisted that true miracles must transcend created nature, including angels, see 231–34); Nichols, "Miracles," 708 ("beyond nature" rather than

"against" it); on Aquinas's view of miracles, see further Brown, Miracles, 11–12; Harrison, "Miracles,"

497–99; Okello, Case, 53–56; Saler, "Supernatural," 37, 47; at greater length, Boublik, "Finalita"; Cirillo,

"Valore"; Berceville, "L'étonnante." Aquinas did occasionally employ "contra naturam," but this was not his usual approach (Gwynne, Action, 183). Augustine, Aquinas, and Locke could view miracles as violations of the usual course of nature (Tennant, Miracle, 33–34), but not in the sense of something impossible for God or of God illegally breaking a law to which he is subject.

125. Brown, Miracles, 9 (citing Augustine Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.13.24).

126. Daston, "Facts," 96. Aquinas graded miracles according to the greatness of their witness (McInerny,

Miracles, 146). Cf. the distinctions noted in King-Farlow, "Insights," 209. For Aquinas, preternatural marvels (those arising from inanimate nature, angels, or demons) were distinct from divine, creative miracles (Daston, "Facts," 97).

127. Laurentin, Miracles, 91. Indeed, for some, like Heim, Transformation, 173–99 (esp. 186–87), God always effects miracles through nature; what makes them miraculous is that they involve God's particularly clear self-revelation (189–90).

128. Tucker, "Miracles," 373. Indeed, rabbinic sources and Catholic theology do not connect miracles with scientific laws before the twentieth century (Tucker, "Miracles," 377).

129. See Ward, Miracles, 214; Meier, "Signs," 758; Nichols, "Supernatural," 28–29; Tucker, "Miracles,"

373 (Tucker places this concept in the seventeenth century). Medieval authors envisioned God's activity

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

Newton, some of whose approach influenced Hume,130 did not define miracles as violations of natural law.131

Those whom Hume opposed in his essay did not view miracles as violations of natural law, and nearly all his critics protested this characterization.132 Why did

Hume challenge a position that the objects of his criticism were not asserting? One historian of philosophy whose dissertation focused on miracles suggests that Hume intended his expressions "transgression," "violation," and the like as "deliberately provocative, since terms such as these are strikingly absent in the literature of the writers Hume was opposing."133 One violates a law only to which one is subject, so the language would not be consistent with theistic premises, at least until it became conventional and lost its provocative force. Some scholars suggest that he and some of his contemporaries constructed the artificial contradiction between a cosmos ruled by laws or by deity in a way that reflected "the Enlightenment political conflict between religion and science,"134 though this conflict is more consistent with the French Enlightenment than its English cousins.135

Even apart from the legal language, though, the image of a putative deity's subordination to natural law is inconsistent with traditional monotheistic conceptions, excluding theists from the conversation at the outset. Thus even the language in both nature and "miraculous deviations from or coincidences within the usual course of nature"

(McFadden, "Elements," 442). Scholastic philosophers treated "nature's habitual custom rather than . . . nature's inviolable law, what usually rather than what infallibly happened," and the mediating category of the preternatural grew in the sixteenth century (Daston, "Facts," 99). Though some were beginning to define miracles over against nature, theologian Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) recognized God's ability to alter or maintain nature's course at will and therefore defined miracles as unusual in contrast to God's usual working (Daston, "Facts," 117). John Donne (1571/2–1631) understood nature itself as God's continuing providence (Brown, Miracles, 28). For alternative conceptualizations of miracles with regard to natural law, see also the concise discussion in Craig, Faith, 143–44.

130. Hume was very interested in Newton's works (Force, "Interest," 183–87) and echoed his logical principles (ibid., 187–91).

131. For him all of nature was miraculous, and one distinguished special miracles by the awe they generated (though they could involve God temporarily suspending the natural laws he normally sustained;

Force, "Breakdown," 148; cf. discussion in Okello, Case, 88–91).

132. Burns, Debate, 234–37 (cited also in Gwynne, Action, 183–84); cf. Burns, "Hume." The conception of natural law in that era may reflect partly a political conception of the era by means of analogy with a new emphasis on statute law (Sharp, "Miracles," 3–4), which in turn may have influenced Calvin's idea of God ruling the universe based on laws (Sharp, "Miracles," 4, following science historian Mason, History,

173–74); the concept of miracles as violation, however, is not attributed to Calvin. Natural laws began to achieve more autonomous status through Descartes and ultimately in the deists (Sharp, "Miracles," 4).

133. Burns, Debate, 236; for "transgression," see Hume, Miracles, 32. Hume's language resembles deists' moral objections to God interrupting the natural order, but Hume rejected the metaphysical significance that rationalists typically attributed to nature's laws (Burns, Debate, 236). "Contrary to" nature, by contrast, had been often used (ibid., 237), though not in the sense of "violation" as if God were bound to natural

"law." Spinoza had also rejected miracles as "interruptions" of nature (cf., e.g., Brockingham, "Miracles,"

493); Hume's "violation," however, is more provocative.

134. Tucker, "Miracles," 378.

135. The myth of intrinsic conflict between religion and science is especially an eighteenth-century

French Enlightenment construct (Lindberg, Beginnings); most English scientists of the time were theists, and some were the very apologists against whom Hume reacted (Burns, Debate, 12, 19).

Are Miracles Possible?

of intervention, which I sometimes adopt here for convenience's sake,136 can be construed as presupposing mechanistic nature's independence, describing better

"what the deist says God doesn't do than . . . what the theist says God does do."137 If one wishes to be technical, then, Hume's definition here is problematic and may bias the case.138 Some thus wonder why Hume's critics have allowed him to dictate so much of the terms of the debate.139 Many no longer use the definition of miracle as a violation of natural law,140 and others have tried to provide less problematic definitions of miracles with respect to nature.141

Hume's language appears to set a default expectation that allows him to claim rhetorical victory without justifying his premise. He appears to define natural law in such a way as to exclude exceptions, and "miracle" as an exception to such exceptionless law. He thus may exclude miracles a priori by a sleight-of-hand fiat accomplished by simply offering these two definitions!142 Yet his definitions need not be accepted, and they do not correspond with some concepts they purport to 136. One can use "intervene" for an intelligent agent adjusting a process that the agent earlier started, thereby guaranteeing the outcome; in this sense (the sense in which I use it), it need not imply lack of involvement in the process as in pure deism. Rather than specifying a particular theistic approach here I am emphasizing that miracles make sense along the entire range of theistic approaches.

137. Inwagen, "Chance," 215.

138. See, e.g., Johnson, Hume, 5–8 (though on 9 he grants Hume's assumption for the sake of argument, intending to refute Hume from a different angle); Larmer, Water, 17–30 (arguing against the conflict between miracles and the laws of nature; on 30 he suggests that God at most simply creates or annihilates that to which natural laws apply; cf. idem, "Physicalism"); Sharp, "Miracles," 1; Pannenberg, "Concept";

Fitzgerald, "Miracles," 48; Griffith, "Miracles," 35–36; Mawson, "Miracles," 33–34; Jensen, "Logic," 151–52;

Ward, "Believing"; Gwynne, Action, 321; Collins, God of Miracles, 148; McGrew, "Miracles" (1.2); likewise,

McGrath, "Mill" (against John Stuart Mill); Walker, "Miracles," 108 (emphasizing that supernatural causation, not violation, must be the essence of a miracle, and treating violation as incoherent); Kreeft and Tacelli, Handbook, 111–12; Langtry, "Miracles"; cf. perhaps Malina, "Thinking," 1203–4. Hume's approach of counting evidence favoring laws of nature against evidence favoring a miracle, as if these are mutually exclusive, is problematic (Larmer, Water, 41).

139. Sharp, "Miracles," 1.

140. Cf. comments in Basinger and Basinger, "Concept," 165; in theology, see, e.g., Van den Berghe,

"Wonderverhalen"; in exegesis, Neil, "Nature Miracles," 369. For one nineteenth-century protest, see

Archbishop Trench in Miracles, 11 (Trench's criticism is also noted in Burns, Debate, 235).

141. Cf. Slenczka, "Schopfung," on miracles restoring rather than contravening nature; Purtill, "Proofs,"

40, prefers "exception" to "violation" (and in "Defining," 37, prefers "exception" or "suspending"); B. B.

Warfield preferred "extra-natural" or "super-natural" (Brown, Miracles, 199); John Henry Newman speaks of miracles as "inconsistent with the constitution of nature" (as cited in Brown, Miracles, 138); perhaps most helpfully, some call it "contrary to the regular course of nature" (Beckwith, "Epistemology," 87; idem, Argument, 7).

142. See Johnson, Hume, 19; Kellenberger, "Miracles," 149; Nichols, "Miracles," 704 (noting on 703 that Hume's purpose in the definition appears to have been to rule them out a priori); Brown, Thought, 243.

Cf. Larmer, Water, 37: "Hume seems guilty of trying to decide a factual matter by definitional gymnastics."

Astonishingly, modern writers occasionally take over his syllogism (e.g., Everitt, "Impossibility," even more astonishingly claiming on 349 that modern writers ignore Hume's case; cf. Wei, "Young," 337).

Ahern, "Physical Impossibility," 77, doubts (against Flew) that Hume should be so construed (see more fully Ahern, "Evidential Impossibility"; also Fogelin, Defense, 17–19; from the perspective of Hume's historical context, cf. Burns, Debate, 142–75) but recognizes that eliminating miracles by definition (as many followers of Hume have done) is not a legitimate argument.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

refute. Indeed, not only postbiblical historical formulations of miracles but also many biblical accounts of miracles portray God working through nature, merely in extraordinary ways. For example, the formulation of "miracle" against which Hume directs his case fails to cover many of Jesus's works treated as "signs" or "miracles" in the Gospels.143 Likewise, most Muslims claim that the Qur'an is a miracle but not that it violates a law of nature.144

As Aviezer Tucker notes in History and Theory, "Hume's definition of miracles does not encompass the most paradigmatic cases of miracles";145 most miracles in the Bible can sometimes be duplicated or imitated by human design without any violation of nature.146 Likewise, science fiction is replete with violations of what we otherwise treat as natural laws, such as displacing of the speed of light as a constant, yet we do not attribute miracle tales or even magical realism to its authors.147 By arguing against a conception of "miracle" that does not encompass most of the paradigmatic examples, Hume fails to offer an argument genuinely relevant to most of those examples.148 At best, his critique might warn against reading Star Trek episodes as factual narratives, something that no mature viewer is tempted to do.149

Even when it appears that God works otherwise, one would speak of violation technically only if one viewed God as subject to such laws, or "interfering" as if nature were autonomous and God did not normally act there.150 If one defines miracles as involving the supernatural, this aspect of the definition must be taken

143. Boobyer, "Miracles," 31–32; Eve, Healer, xvi–xvii. Hume's definition thus disengages from real conversation partners; even modern charismatic experience expects a divinely led world primed for special divine action, not one naturally opposed to it (Smith, Thinking, 93, 98, 103–5). Astonishingly, Pullum,

"Believe," 137, adopts the Humean definition as the biblical one (though some of his biblical examples on 138–39 fit this definition better than most biblical miracles do).

144. Clarke, "Definition," 51. The frequent Muslim claim that the Qur'an by itself is a sufficient attesting miracle might parallel (as a sort of historical analogy) early cessationist Protestants' dependence on Scripture without contemporary attesting miracles in their debates with Catholics (though Muslims, unlike these

Protestants, were not cessationist).

145. Tucker, "Miracles," 375.

146. Ibid., 375–76, comparing with even rocks from the sky (Josh 10:11, which also calls them

"hailstones," using a term found in Exod 9:18–34 and elsewhere) greater weapons of mass destruction available today.

147. Ibid., 376 (instancing Star Trek and Isaac Asimov).

148. Ibid., 379. Some would demur regarding some examples such as Jesus's resurrection. Even there, however, the empty tomb and Jewish language of "resurrection" imply transformation rather than mere replacement (cf. Keener, Historical Jesus, 337–42); some interpreters so view the eschatological new creation more generally (e.g., Stephens, "Destroyers"; I am inclined to agree). For the connection between Jesus's resurrection and a new creation, see, e.g., Moltmann, "Resurrection"; Wright, "Resurrection."

149. Tucker, "Miracles," 379.

150. Evans, Narrative, 144–46; Polkinghorne, Science and Providence, 46; Ward, "Believing," 746; cf.

Witmer, "Doctrine"; for miracles as merely "unusual" divine activity, on a popular level, Little, Believe, 60,

62; idem, Faith, 119; Hawthorne, Windows, 103–10; Lutzer, Miracles, 17. Little offers a useful quote from Hawthorne, Questions, 55 (which is also found in Hawthorne, Windows, 104): "Miracles are unusual events caused by God. The laws of nature are generalizations about usual events caused by God."

Are Miracles Possible?

into account when defining what is naturally "impossible,"151 since on theistic grounds it could remain supernaturally possible (cf. Mark 10:27; Luke 1:37; 18:27).

One could allow (with deists) that God established natural activity as a norm. Yet one could without any inconsistency also allow (against deists) that God can also act in nature in ways that differ from the norm without articulating this discretion as if it must be subject to the norm. One could view God as an agent modifying causal conditions (as agents by definition can) without "violating" natural law.152

Natural law is, after all, merely our construct of how nature functions. If one chooses to define natural law in such a way as to make variation from it impossible, one has simply redefined words about reality rather than made an argument, and someone else could counter by redefining "miracle" as part of that reality. As one philosopher of religion puts it, "This argument commits the same sin that critics of the ontological argument for God's existence allege infects Anselm's attempted proof, namely, trying to decide what is true in the real world by the manner in which we define our terms."153

Thus, on the usual reading of Hume, he manages to define away any possibility of a miracle occurring, by defining "miracle" as a violation of natural law, yet defining "natural law" as principles that cannot be violated.154 As one philosopher complains, once a miracle could be proved to occur, natural law would be redefined to accommodate this occurrence, which would thus no longer be accepted as miraculous. "The miracle seems for ever frustrated in its attempts to violate; for as soon as it imagines that it has succeeded, it finds that there was nothing there after all to violate!"155 That is, Hume's definitions assume what he claims to prove, a standard fallacy recognized in logic.

Nature versus Hume Even if one were to grant Hume's definition of miracle (a "violation" of natural law), not all will concede his definition of, or at least his approach to, natural law.

151. Cf. Ahern, "Physical Impossibility," 78. Odegard, "Miracles," 46, notes that if we define a miracle as a violation of nature, it is not incoherent if we understand it as "an instance of a kind of event which is impossible unless a god produces an instance," a proposition one can allow hypothetically. (In practice, many miracle claims are simply extraordinarily improbable, rather than absolutely impossible, without a deity's activity, instances that may prove mutually supportive cumulatively.) Cf. also comments on "boundary conditions," below.

152. Young, "Petitioning," 196; idem, "Miracles," 465; idem, "Impossibility," 33; Nichols, "Miracles,"

709.

153. Evans, Narrative, 148. A challenge to the ontological argument is that one cannot get more from a deductive argument than is inherent in its premise, and the conclusion cannot succeed without the premise (Davies, Mind, 188). For a summary of Anselm's argument, see, e.g., Brown, Philosophy, 20–24; for Anselm's own argument more fully, see Bush, Readings, 237–70. By contrast, Scarre, "Tillotson,"

63–64, treats miracles as "epistemically destabilizing," bringing into question "the reliability of one's perceptual processes."

154. This, although he has supposedly arrived at the "laws" inductively, a matter I discuss further below.

155. Smart, Philosophers, 33.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

A substantial part of Hume's argument depends on his conception of natural law,156 and his perspective on natural law is now recognized as outmoded in view of more recent developments in physics.157 Contemporary physics views causation in less strict terms than Newtonian physics, and its worldview involves "much more change and open potentiality."158 For most thinkers, natural "laws" are merely systematized descriptions of normal activity, but under other conditions these patterns may prove subject to more complex principles.159 Scientific method today normally understands laws as describing evidence rather than as prescriptive or comprehensive, since the latter approach would exclude the regularly discovered

156. Williams, Miraculous, 20. Thus Swinburne, "Violation," 78–81, is prepared to use Hume's description and then to show that such "violations" are logically possible. Clark, "Miracles and Law," 33, complains that detractors against miracles usually do not provide a clear enough definition of natural law to explain how it renders miracles impossible (though Hume on some readings simply reckons infrequency against its probability).

157. See, e.g., Pannenberg, "History," 65; Williams, Miraculous, 204–5; Gilman, "Miracles," 478; Griffith,

"Miracles," 35 (who avers that natural law in the Humean sense might not even exist); Hunter, Work, 88;

Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:519–20; Charlesworth, "Resurrection," 170–71; idem, "Origin," 227; Blomberg,

Gospels, 105–6 (and sources he cites); cf. Carlston, "Question," 99 (no single worldview prevails today).

Cf. also the argument in Twelftree, Miracle Worker, 51 (following Larmer, Water, 52–56, and others).

Although not framed directly against Hume but more generally against thoroughgoing naturalism, see especially Barr, Physics and Faith. Philosophers of science may still formulate theoretical frameworks that are "law-like" (cf., e.g., Salmon, "Explanation," 225, though emphasizing statistical explanations), but external frameworks must remain provisional. Against using modern physics to provide naturalistic explanations of miracles, see Keller, Miracles, 173–74.

158. Peacocke, Creation, 135; see also Gilman, "Miracles," 479; Davies, Mind, 29–30; much earlier, cf. Spurr, "Miracles," 325.

159. For laws as simply describing patterns, see, e.g., Wills, "Miracles," 139; Phillips, "Miracles," 34;

Mumford, "Laws," 265–66 (differing appreciatively from Lowe, "Miracles," on this point); Lonergan,

Method, 226; Kelly, "Miracle," 49, 55–56. Mumford, "Laws," 276–77, argues for dispositional description rather than actualist description: that is, the norm based on probability of occurrence, not a universal claim about what must always occur, regardless of other conditions. Some argue that naturally impossible events remain logically possible (Lowe, "Miracles," 271) provided one understands laws as descriptions of normal reality and not inviolable (Lowe, "Miracles," 273–77; cf. earlier Tennant, Miracle,

22–24). Such laws are not logical or mathematical necessities (deductive a prioris) but are generalizations from a finite body of observations under limited conditions (cf. Helm, "Miraculous," 91), hence their periodic revision in the face of new evidence or more complete paradigms (Sharp, "Miracles," 6).

We must speak only of "laws of physics," inexact conclusions from induction needing revision (Clark,

"Miracles and Law," 29–30), especially when faced with new circumstances. Quantum theory has moved much scientific description of basic natural laws from physical determinism to treating these laws as "statistical" (Swinburne, "Introduction," 3; on laws' "statistical" force, cf. also Wills, "Miracles," 141;

Ward, "Believing," 746), although this description particularly involves small-scale events. Others suggest that rare violations (or exceptions) do not destroy general norms (Ward, "Believing," 743); laws apply to sorts of things without invalidating exceptions for individual cases (Mumford, "Laws," 272–73,

278, qualifying Lowe's "sortal logic"); or laws carry their own implied boundary conditions (Hoffman,

"Comments," 349–50; cf. Howard-Snyder, "Case," 405–6), such as, "except for divine intervention."

On the analogy of human laws, see Mavrodes, "Miracles," especially 345, though see the criticism in Hoffman, "Comments," 350–51; Mumford, "Laws," 275–76 (qualifying Lowe); before Hume, natural law for some entailed this comparison (see Daston, "Facts," 112, on Spencer). Today process theology

(for one example) takes natural laws to be simply descriptions "of the average behavior" of entities, which have a range of deviation that God can employ working even "within" nature (Keller, "Power," 121–22).

See Mozley's earlier criticism of Hume, below.

Are Miracles Possible?

abundance of evidence that does not easily fit old paradigms.160 Some even treat the idea of "laws of nature" as language merely left over from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.161

At different levels or on different conditions, the laws may be subject to higher or more complex principles. Thus these laws "behave in extreme ways in unusual contexts (for example, superconductivity or black holes)."162 Principles applicable to some kinds of matter under some conditions may need to be adjusted under significantly higher temperatures, density, and so forth, so that even voluminous observations limited to one setting need not predict phenomena for all conditions; by the same token, we should not expect norms of nature to predict conditions if an active intelligence beyond the universe would choose to act in distinctive ways in it. One therefore need not speak of apparent anomalies in terms of violations of a rigid, deterministic system. In fact, the violation concept of miracle is not feasible on any of the three major theories of natural law prevailing today, rendering

Hume's primary philosophic argument untenable.163 In a different cosmological framework plausible today, Hume's very argument works against him.164

Some contend, however, that Hume's appeals to these laws of nature violates not only modern physics but even his own epistemological system. Scholars today sometimes thus challenge Hume's approach in this essay as inconsistent with his normal epistemology (which may have its own inadequacies).165 Hume implies that he uses the inductive approach characteristic of empiricism, yet I shall observe below that his approach to miracles is hardly inductive. For example, Hume accepted Baconian induction while arguing that one could not justify induction rationally.166 Hume's usual empiricism was so radical that it allowed only disconnected experiences, not determinations of causation, which are interpretive. The past sequence of events arouses expectation of their continuation, but cannot

160. Nichols, "Miracles," 705; Cramer, "Miracles," 136–37; Gwynne, Action, 172; Byrne, "Miracles,"

165–66. Wills, "Miracles," 138–39, articulates the distinction (offered since Newton) between "natural law" (in the sense of fundamental principles) and "scientific law" (patterns recognized and formulated by scientists; cf. also Sharp, "Miracles," 7, 13). Instrumentalists even see laws as merely hypothetical constructs for useful application (Toulmin, Philosophy, 70, as cited in Sharp, "Miracles," 6); the conception of law is also problematic for modern philosophy (esp. for nontheists who find in it reference to a Lawmaker; see ibid.).

161. Van Fraasen, Laws and Symmetry, from a summary in Kelly, "Miracle," 55.

162. Nichols, "Miracles," 705, suggesting that the same can be true of laws in the context of divine action.

163. Breggen, "Miracle Reports," 58–77, summarizing the approaches (61–69) and concluding

(69) that on any of them "the violation concept of miracle is logically contradictory and so should be abandoned." He defends a "non-violation concept of miracle" on 71–77. For approaches, see Lange,

"Laws," 208–11.

164. See ibid., 376–77.

165. Varghese, "Introduction," 16, charges that critiques by Hume and Kant against arguments for God's existence stem "from their eccentric theories of knowledge" and "fly in the face of the key assumptions underlying the scientific model."

166. Popper, Conjectures, 200. Strict Baconian emphasis on observation, followed by Hume and the positivists, neglected the role of theory (Barbour, Religion and Science, 11). Many note Hume's reasonable caution about drawing inferences from induction (Landesman, Epistemology, 136–37; Davies, Mind, 27; here see Hume, Miracles, 26).

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

justify our expectations.167 For example, far from endorsing nature's uniformity,

Hume argued that one might presume that the sun would rise the next day out of habit, but one could not be certain about it.168 He critiqued conventional notions of causality, treating laws as "merely observed uniformities" and, against earlier rationalists, denying them any metaphysical role.169 Thus some argue that Hume himself could not support the notion of inviolable laws (as opposed to mere habits of interpretation); if taken to its logical conclusion, the epistemological rigor in his miracles essay would have undercut even Newton's physics.170

Hume's actual wording need not contradict his skeptical epistemology: he grants the argument from laws of nature to be as "entire as any argument from experience" can be,171 which technically need not imply that he regards such arguments as very reliable. In this case Hume himself does not subscribe to such an argument from experience, and offers the argument only against those who do, or to the degree that cumulative experience could be trustworthy. If this is how Hume means his argument, though, it means that he is offering an argument that must prove far less than certain even on his own assumptions and therefore limited in what it proves. Granted, such an argument could support epistemic probability, if it were otherwise sound. I have argued, however, that it is not sound, given its view of nature and its circularly presupposing that claimed supernatural agencies may be excluded from consideration.

Others think that Hume was consistent with his usual epistemology, and that this is precisely the problem.172 On some readings, Hume's epistemology attacked induction itself, insofar as induction involved reasoning from events rather than merely reciting them.173 Naturally, one cannot expect Hume to have accepted an 167. Taylor, Hume, 27–29; Beckwith, Argument, 22. In Hume's own philosophy, miracles might be against past experience and hence expectation, but such experience could not be comprehensive enough to guarantee that they would not occur (see Gaskin, Philosophy, 122). For Hume such an event might be two persons conversing while one was in Europe and the other in North America; yet such events are not logically impossible, and they now happen regularly (124).

168. Beckwith, Argument, 22; cf. Jones, Hobbes to Hume, 322. Nevertheless, he, like most of us, would have regarded the degree of probability as high enough to be taken for granted in ordinary life.

169. Gwynne, Action, 171; see discussion in Jones, Hobbes to Hume, 315–20; Taylor, Hume, 25–27.

Already nearly a century ago Tennant, Miracle, 81, noted that despite this essay's notoriety, in general "it is the least characteristic of its author"; moreover (82), compared with his more reasoned works, "it is flimsy and even doubtfully sincere," violating his own theory of causality.

170. Brown, Miracles, 93; D'Souza, Christianity, 183–88, esp. 187–88; cf. Taylor, Hume, 37–42 (on 42 preferring Leibniz to Hume for scientific method). Metaphysics explores deeper levels of causation; denying questions of causation allows merely observation of isolated phenomena (cf. Tonquédec, Miracles,

42–43). Discussion of even immediate forms of causation has expanded significantly since Hume's day

(see e.g., Spitzer, Proofs, 222–24).

171. Hume, Miracles, 31; idem, "Miracles," 33.

172. Levine, Problem, 186; Burns, Debate, 176.

173. Taylor, Hume, 39 (noting that Hume denied any external structure for experience), 43. Probably

Hume attacked only affirmations of certainty from induction (see Landesman, Epistemology, 137), a reasonable concern. Even so, his theory of knowledge does not account for his own method (Lonergan,

Understanding, 38, 231).

Are Miracles Possible?

argument for divine causation when he was skeptical about knowledge of causation to begin with.174 Yet not only with respect to miracles but more generally Hume's epistemology is not, as I have noted, very plausible in today's context.175

Most likely, Hume is only partially consistent. On his premises, the more unusual an event, the less believable it is; but in his epistemology, this matter of believability does not stem from inviolable laws but from habits of mental thought formed by previous experience, and this past experience forms but does not justify beliefs.176

To prove that some people find some events incredible would not, however, have generated much interest, so Hume argues for what people ought to find credible, an argument that runs counter to his own stated epistemology.177 In his treatment of epistemology, Hume regarded all beliefs as unjustifiable opinions, though

Hume also claimed to live by that perspective, itself no more than a belief, only when doing his philosophic work.178 That is, Hume appears to have adopted for strategic polemical purposes a position for the argument of this essay that he did not maintain elsewhere.179 Indeed, whereas Hume was ready to assume nature's uniformity a priori for his miracles essay, even there he "was too shrewd to try to prove its universality."180

Philosopher Hendrik van der Breggen notes that Hume's approach is frequently viewed as problematic today: "Much critical examination of Hume's argument by philosophers has made it abundantly clear that Hume seriously overestimates the negative evidential weight the law-of-nature side of the scale bears on the credibility of miracle testimony."181

Hume's Antitheistic Starting Assumptions Hume's argument is not neutral as to the possibility of supernatural or divine activity but a priori excludes that possibility, hence prejudges the conclusion of the investigation.182 In a truly neutral starting point, one need not presuppose the 174. Cf. Brown, Thought, 250.

175. Levine, Problem, 186 (noting that the epistemology is problematic for most modern philosophers, including himself); cf. Burns, Debate, 176; Varghese, "Introduction," 16

176. Taylor, Hume, 29–30.

177. Ibid., 31–36 (on Hume's exclusion of logical and moral obligation to belief, see 28).

178. Ibid., 24–25 (on belief's irrationality in Hume, see further 33; on the problems this offers for Hume's own belief in his miracles essay, 40). Hume allowed observations about events and their sequence, but questioned beliefs about their relationship or causation. In practice, of course, the latter may be accepted to degrees of probability based on our less than fully certain knowledge. Cf. ancient Stoics' emphasis on certain knowledge versus mere opinion (for the ideal sage), in Arius Didymus 2.7.11m, p. 94.5, 13–16,

19–24; 96.9–14 (cf. 2.7.10b, p. 58.18–23, 27, 30); in matters of piety, cf. other thinkers like Porphyry

Marc. 17.284–85; 19.310–11; Philostratus Ep. Apoll. 52.

179. Cf. Brown, Miracles, 168; Gwynne, Action, 171.

180. Tennant, Miracle, 15 (critiquing his disciple John Stuart Mill for proving "less cautious").

181. Breggen, "Scale," 443.

182. Houston, Miracles, 133–34; Smart, Philosophers, 32; Twelftree, Miracle Worker, 41 (cf. also 44, against the argument of Alastair McKinnon; for McKinnon's argument, see McKinnon, "Miracle"); cf.

Baxter, "Historical Judgment," 30.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

existence of a deity to allow the hypothesis of a deity's action; one need only not rule it out.183 Yet this is precisely what Hume's argument must effectively do; as one philosopher points out, "it is only by presupposing a conclusively justified atheism, or presupposing belief in a non-miracle-working god . . . that you are entitled to adduce with any cogency" natural laws against the possibility of miracles.184 An atheist has reason to presuppose miracles impossible on the premise of atheism, but they are not logically impossible; the degree of probability assigned to miracles depends on one's prior assumptions.185

Others in fact point out that if on other grounds one has reason to affirm theism,186 with a self-revealing, active God, then what we call miracles might even be expected;187 miracles are against the ordinary observed course of nature, but that is their point.188 We might expect such unusual acts at times (though not at all times—otherwise we might presumably view them as natural law), especially in particular settings that involve the message that this God seeks to communicate.189 Thus many scholars consider the religious and theological context when

183. Houston, Miracles, 148, 160; Swinburne, "Introduction," 14; cf. Lawton, Miracles, 56; Larmer,

Water, x. See my brief discussion of divine action in ch. 6.

184. Houston, Miracles, 162; cf. likewise Sider, "Methodology," 27; Ward, "Believing," 742; Evans,

Narrative, 156; McInerny, Miracles, 135–38; Breggen, "Seeds." Houston notes that if one presupposes atheism methodologically so that one's conclusions must be atheistic, no argument could satisfy the position's demands (Houston, Miracles, 168). Backhaus, "Falsehood," 307, argues that Hume recognized

"the atheist's belief" as involving faith no less than "the theist's."

185. Ward, "Miracles and Testimony," 137–38. Ward (ibid., 144) contends that even for an atheist, they are logically possible; for a theist, they are probable.

186. Some would argue that one might start with a premise of theism if other grounds warranted (cf.

Evans, "Naturalism," esp. 205). Some seek to establish theism before invoking God as a causal factor (Young,

"Epistemology"; cf. writers cited in Tennant, Miracle, 63–64), or note that miracles are comprehensible as such only on theistic premises (Taylor, Hume, 46–51); provided that one brackets this explanation as one explanatory hypothesis, however, the questions may be approached in tandem (cf. Weintraub,

"Credibility," 373, though lamenting the absence of a sufficiently coherent theistic theory). As McGrew,

"Argument," 639–40, notes, "not knowing that there is a God" differs from "knowing that there is not a God" (quotation from 640).

187. See Swinburne, "Evidence," 204–6 (regarding the hypothesis of Jesus's resurrection); idem,

"Introduction," 14–15; idem, "Historical Evidence," 151; Polkinghorne, Science and Providence, 58; Taylor,

Hume, 51; Hambourger, "Belief," 601; Evans, Narrative, 155; Ward, "Miracles and Testimony," 144; Purtill,

"Proofs," 43; Otte, "Treatment," 155–57; Langtry, "Probability," 70; Kelly, "Miracle," 50; cf. John Henry

Newman (in Brown, Miracles, 137–38); Mozley, Lectures, 74–92; Akhtar, "Miracles" (noting the necessity of miracles in traditional Christian belief); Keene, "Possibility of Miracles," 214 (because of God's concern for humanity). Smart, Philosophy of Religion, 113, contends that miracles are accepted because of the authority behind them, rather than the reverse, though this dichotomy reflects modern Western assumptions. One may contrast here Hume, who denied the credibility of miracle stories recounted in religious contexts, because he deemed the latter irrational (e.g., Hume, Miracles, 36, 50).

188. Cf. Swinburne, "Evidence," 201–2 (regarding Jesus's resurrection); cf. this answer against Hume historically in Ellin, "Again," 209; cf. also the kingdom "sign" (significance) value of miracles in Polkinghorne,

Science and Providence, 51. Biblical miracle stories often focus on what is naturally impossible (cf. Wire,

"Story," 36–37).

189. See, e.g., Evans, Narrative, 159, noting that "the amount of evidence" needed to surmount appropriate epistemological caution would presumably vary "depending on the intrinsic plausibility and apparent religious significance of the miracle." On the premise of an active, revealing God, one would

Are Miracles Possible?

evaluating miracle claims,190 a position that has a long history.191 If one starts with agnostic or (especially) theistic assumptions rather than atheistic or deistic ones, one will be more open to evidence for miracles. If one allows for a deity who acts purposefully, then, as another scholar puts it, "it will be unreasonable not to accept reliable testimony" for miracles.192

I have noted that many miracle claims involve events that are conceivable within nature, though barely believable without specific divine action, such as a wind parting the sea. Some kinds of events, such as resurrection to an eschatological order of existence, may not occur naturally, but if one does not a priori exclude the possibility of supranatural activity, one need not exclude such events.193 That is, we may be right to exclude such events as improbable among natural phenomena, but we need not exclude their possibility as if they belong to a context otherwise suggesting an extraordinary supranatural origin.

Hume claimed that his own results were agnostic rather than atheistic,194 but the argument he uses to evaluate the possibility of miracles is not neutral. A genuinely agnostic approach would not circularly reject all evidence for divine activity in principle. An agnostic position affirms neither theism nor atheism, but must allow the possibility for either. Presupposing without argument that there can be no intelligent agency elevates "ontological economy to a supremacy," Houston notes, that "not even Occam accords it."195 Moreover, Hume pretends no neutralbe more apt to expect miracles in narratives that claimed to recount this deity's activity. On a genuinely divine miracle's significance (i.e., expression of the purpose of a consistent and benevolent deity), see also

Polkinghorne, Science and Providence, 45 (following Swinburne, Miracle, 1), 51; Smart, Philosophers, 43, 46.

190. Many argue that miracle claims are more probable if they fit a larger theological scheme

(Tonquédec, Miracles, 52; Ward, "Miracles and Testimony," 142; Jantzen, "Miracles," 356; Licona and Van der Watt, "Historians and Miracles," 4–5; for the theological context of Gospel miracles in the larger gospel story, see, e.g., Helm, "Miraculous," 86–88; as part of the larger divine reality, McKenzie, "Signs,"

17); they should have religious significance (Nicolls, "Laws"; Jensen, "Logic," 148; Beckwith, Argument,

11–12; Licona and Van der Watt, "Historians and Miracles," 1–2; cf. Fitzgerald, "Miracles," 60–61; Phillips,

"Miracles," 38–39). Fern, "Critique," 351–54, insists that for a miracle to be meaningful, it must be not only inexplicable but also showing purposefulness. On purpose in miracles, see, e.g., Burhenn, "Miracles,"

488; cf. also debates about supernatural intention (e.g., Clarke, "Definition," 53–55; idem, "Response").

191. Miracles' religious purpose dominated much discussion until the reaction against the Enlightenment

(so McNamara, "Nature," suggesting that balance is now returning to the discussion); in the seventeenth century, note Joseph Glanvill (Burns, Debate, 49–50), Robert Boyle (ibid., 55–56), and the majority of orthodox apologists (e.g., ibid., 114–15). Hume resists this position, thereby oversimplifying his argument

(see ibid., 169–70, 178; but cf. Hume's mention of "a particular volition of the Deity" in Miracles, 32).

192. Ward, "Miracles and Testimony," 144–45 (quote from 145). A logical possibility, miracles become a real possibility if theism is true (Sider, "Historian," 312).

193. Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 99, 111 (citing here also Polkinghorne, Quarks, 100–101;

Pannenberg; and others); Craig, Faith, 151.

194. Barbour, Religion and Science, 44.

195. Houston, Miracles, 195 (referring to metaphysical naturalism's monism). Some have appealed to Occam's razor against miracles; see, e.g., Goulder's claim and a response in Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 414; idem, Resurrection, 494–95. The simplest solution is normally the most testable

(Popper, Conjectures, 61). I have briefly suggested above (with many others) that pantheism and ontological materialism (i.e., no deity distinct from nature) are inadequate. I also noted that most theists regard some form of single designer hypothesis as explaining the universe's order more simply than its leading

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

ity; he explicitly frames his polemic against miracles in opposition to affirmations of "Christian religion," though titling the latter (for an eighteenth-century resident of the British Isles, naturally enough) "our religion."196 Both Hume's supporters and his detractors usually recognize that he harbored prejudice against contemporary religion197 and nearly always recognize that he constructed his approach in antithesis to Christian apologetic.198

Hume poses as the only alternative to his naturalistic approach the exclusion of a basic regularity in the universe, hence abandoning the value of analogy and experience.199 This alternative is, however, a straw man based on forced-choice logic; a theist can counter by simply postulating a normal order in the universe, while allowing for the hypothesis of "a characteristically order-giving yet occasionally miracle-working god" or other supernatural agent.200 That is, one need not postulate a forced choice between either a deistic/atheistic orderly universe or a universe without order.201 Indeed, to do so would be to ignore alternative views held even by the majority of the founders of modern science, who most often believed in the Christian God, though in some cases the deistic one.202 As I philosophic competitor, the multiple universe hypothesis. Pure deism's explanatory power is limited, since it does not answer why a personal deity would have created initially a world in which it would then have little personal involvement (less in physical terms than humans could have).

196. Hume, Miracles, 24; idem, "Miracles," 29, contending that "our evidence . . . for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses." Many see mockery in his language

(noted in Taylor, Hume, 19; Brown, Thought, 245); they may be correct (cf. Hume, Miracles, 54).

197. Fogelin, Defense, 61, concedes Hume's "loathing for religious enthusiasm," while emphasizing that he excludes not only miracles but also "spontaneous free acts" as inimical to his naturalistic worldview; for Hume's attacks on religious knowledge, see also Force, "Breakdown," 156–57. Backhaus, "Falsehood," 303, notes Hume's personal prejudice against religion and how it could be addressed positively from within his own philosophic framework (citing as an example a nineteenth-century Humean's faith, 308–9).

198. Flew, "Arguments," 46; Brown, Miracles, 80; idem, Thought, 242–45; Slupic, "Interpretation,"

518, 520–23; Jaki, Miracles and Physics, 21–22; Larmer, Water, 103–4; note some examples of the sort of apologetics he protested in Helm, "Miraculous," 83–85. For the recent historical construction of that apologetic, see, e.g., Daston, "Facts," 95.

199. As in a worldview where capricious spirits dominate causation. But we must also reckon with the limitations of reported experience—and Hume's a priori exclusion of the experience of irregular events, at least when they might involve God (cf. also, on a popular level, Lewis, Miracles, ch. 13). Belief in overarching purpose (hence implicitly God) need have no limiting effect on the investigation of efficient causes (see Wilcox, "Blind," 169, 175).

200. Houston, Miracles, 141; cf. Collins, Language of God, 50–53; Tonquédec, Miracles, 11; for belief in exceptions being compatible with belief in many kinds of events being normal, see, e.g., Geisler, Miracles, 81.

201. Larmer, Water, 123, argues that other philosophic options are pantheism and panentheism (with polytheism and "animism" sliding into either theism or pantheism, though this does not always appear to happen).

202. Note Christians such as Blaise Pascal; Galileo (whose daughter, Sister Celeste, a nun, was his spiritual advisor); Johannes Kepler; Antony van Leeuwenhook (in microbiology); Robert Boyle

(in chemistry, whose will funded theistic lectures); Andreas Vesalius (in anatomy); William Harvey

(in physiology); or Gregor Mendel, a monk (in genetics). Isaac Newton was theologically Arian (see

Popkin, "Deism," 30–31; Force, "Gentleman," 122–28; Frankenberry, Faith, 103; he maintained Arianism partly by claiming that Athanasius forged the nt trinitarian texts [Popkin, "Bible Scholar," 107; idem,

"Fundamentalism," 165], a textually untenable position), but he argued for design in the universe; against him being a deist, see Force, "Deism," 53–62; idem, "Gentleman," 134–36; Frankenberry, Faith, 106. (On

Are Miracles Possible?

have noted, it was not new scientific data but shifting philosophic paradigms that altered that perception.

Notwithstanding recent detractors above (with whom I agree), a large proportion of proponents of miracles since Hume have appealed to the essential regularity of the universe to define miracles as something that differs from that.203 That is, even many who define miracles as contrary to nature find no logic in the forced alternatives posed by Hume; order in the universe does not exclude the special action of a deity distinct from and not dependent on the universe. In practice, because most proponents of miracles view them as exceptional signs rather than as nature's norm, they support use of medical and other natural means of providing for human need where they are available. They do not feel obligated to draw from their view of natural law the same conclusions that Hume did, because they understand that theistic premises differ from atheistic and deistic premises. If there is a deity on whom the universe depends rather than the reverse, there is no logical necessity of this deity being subordinate to the patterns of the deity's usual working.

Against many interpreters, some read Hume as arguing against not the possibility of miracles but the plausibility of accepting any particular miracle claims given the norms of human experience,204 and against using them as sufficient proofs for the foundation of any religious system.205 On the most charitable reading, Hume merely viewed the lack of demonstrable prior miracles (in his circle's experience) as making miracle claims much less probable206 (though the less thoroughgoing the claim of improbability, the easier it is to be surmounted by contrary evidence). It some of these thinkers, see concisely the articles in ChH 76 [4, 2002].) "Most eighteenth-century thinkers thought that an argument from design could be given for God's existence" (Wolterstorff, "Theology and Science," 98). This may apply even to Hume (the letter quotation in Backhaus, "Falsehood," 293, sounds like this, though this is from 1745 rather than later).

203. Cf. this summary in Lawton, Miracles, 55; Sharp, "Miracles," 1–2 (on the common view, not his own); for examples, see, e.g., Tonquédec, Miracles, 13, 21; Sabourin, Miracles, 15; Dhanis, "Miracle"; Miller,

"Miracle," 36 (contending that this approach demonstrates the opposite of what Hume expected, 35–36);

Pearl, "Miracles," 489–90; the ordinary miracle proponent in Ellin, "Again," 207–8. Ashe, Miracles, 13 (cf.

26), thinks "miracle" an advanced concept because it depends on natural law; but this approach involves only a modern Western concept of miracle and not necessarily the most current form. For the value of signs being extraordinary, see, e.g., Bernard, "Miracle," 395.

204. Geisler, "Miracles," 75–76. Evans, Narrative, 153, suggests that though the matter is debated, Hume probably means "epistemic probability, the probability of an event's occurrence given what is known about the event and the situation"; cf. also Mackie, "Miracles and Testimony," 86 (despite his own conclusions on 95–96); Evans and Manis, Philosophy of Religion, 128–29; Hambourger, "Belief," 587; Brown, Miracles,

81; Ellin, "Again," 203; Beckwith, Argument, 23–24; Wallace, "Hume," 231; earlier, Trench, Miracles, 54.

(Deist Ethan Allen likewise argued not against miracles but against having reason to believe in them; Fosl,

"Hume," 176.) For problems with construing Hume so narrowly, in view of his essay as a whole, see Larmer,

Water, 31–34; Fogelin, "Hume" (though he grants that this is a common construal, 81). Kant, radically separating natural and supernatural worlds, allowed in principle for miracles (i.e., supernaturally caused events) but not for recognizing them (Nuyen, "Kant on Miracles," 314). Thus at best Kant did not see need to appeal to miracles; they belonged to the nonphysical realm, which could not be tested by reason

(Brown, Miracles, 103–7). Against Kant on science, see, e.g., Tennant, Miracle, 12–13.

205. Johnson, Hume, 1–4. This is at least one of his interests; see Hume, Miracles, 51.

206. E.g., Sober, "Proposal," 490.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

is possible that this was Hume's primary intention, yet if so, some of his comments indicate that at points he lapsed into claiming more than this.207

More important for our purposes, if it is true, many of his successors have distorted his original argument. The popular understanding of Hume's line of thought remains influential and requires rebuttal, which I have undertaken here. It is possible that some of Hume's defenders adjust or nuance his argument to protect him from the charge of circularity—though many of us would affirm that a charge of circularity still applies, in view of the quantity and quality of many miracle claims.

In any case, Hume's rejection of any eyewitness evidence for particular miracles would still remain open to question, requiring much of the same response that is offered here.208 As I shall note further below, Hume is not completely agnostic about events when they are merely unusual. It is only when they are most readily construed as supernatural acts that he rejects evidence for them a priori.

Hume's Epistemology regarding Miracles Despite claiming to argue inductively, Hume's argument against miracles is deductive. He argues from nature's uniformity against miracles, which is the point in question. He generalizes from the alleged lack of good testimony for miracles to exclude what may in fact be good testimony for miracles. If Hume intends such arguments to make miracles impossible, his case is circular. If Hume intends such arguments merely to predict the weight of finite probabilities rather than to render miracles impossible, his case falters against considerable evidence for miracles. If Hume argues that no evidence in principle can be sufficient to compel belief in miracles, his claim might succeed to the extent that the evaluator of the evidence held tenaciously to antimiraculous presuppositions, but is not logically necessary if the evaluator is genuinely open-minded on the question.209 None of the various interpretations of Hume offer a successful argument against the possibility of miracles or even of finding his argument more persuasive than not.

Hume on Testimony Hume's intellectual context forced him to challenge the reliability of testimony, because it was the primary basis on which the early empiricists argued for miracles;210 he followed here one line of argument against nt miracles emphasized by the 207. Holder, "Hume," 57–58. It appears to me that Hume claims more in his first section involving laws of nature, but perhaps only epistemic probability in most of his treatment of witnesses.

208. For problems with Hume's construction of epistemic probability, see Mackie, "Miracles and Testimony," 91.

209. Cf. Perry, "Miracles," 66, complaining about the closed-mindedness of scholars who deny that any amount of evidence can substantiate extranormal claims, and comparing Hume's own insistence that "no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle."

210. Cf. Burns, Debate, 51.

Are Miracles Possible?

deists.211 Thus Hume, seeking to make his case, quickly denies that sufficient credible witnesses exist to substantiate miracles.212 By contrast, my subsequent chapters on miracle claims will emphasize that we have an overwhelmingly greater number of witnesses today than were available to Hume, an observation that should make his case far more tenuous for interpreters today than it appeared in his day. But let us consider his argument in more detail: Are the witnesses and their miraculous interpretations potentially reliable?

According to a common reading of Hume (which I think most probable), he rejects in practice the possibility of any witnesses reliable enough to challenge the unlikelihood of miracles. He circularly bases this denial on the assumed uniformity of human experience against such miracles,213 a uniformity that would deconstruct if there were any adequately clear instances of such miracles. Claiming uniform experience against miracles is not really an argument, scholars often note, because it "begs the question at issue, which is whether anyone has experienced a miracle."214

Or as one critic puts it, "Hume used the unproved conclusion (that miracles are not possible) and made it a datum of his argument (miracles do not happen)."215

Some supporters of miracles articulate this logical problem even more bluntly:

"It amounts to saying 'miracles violate the principle that miracles never happen.'"216

(Some doubt, however, that Hume is fully consistent on this circular exclusion of miracles' possibility even within the essay.217) Claims about nature and miracles both rest on experience, so claimed experience of the former cannot cancel out

211. Ibid., 77 (noting also the English deists' influence on German biblical criticism).

212. Hume, Miracles, 27–54, esp. 32–37.

213. E.g., Hume, Miracles, 31; cf. the argument in ibid., 38; idem, "Miracles," 36, noting that prodigies mentioned in ancient historians do not currently occur. Others also complain about this circularity (e.g.,

Craig, Faith, 151; cf. perhaps even T. H. Huxley in Boobyer, "Miracles," 41). He excludes any evidence for miracles because they are conceptually impossible—because of his a priori assumption of what is conceptually possible (Brown, Miracles, 94). This answer to Hume assumes that he has denied the possibility of miracles at the outset, a frequent interpretation that admittedly some scholars deny. Thus, for example

Fogelin, Defense, 16–31, argues that Hume's real argument is only the testimonial argument (the second part of his essay); if so (and I do not find this construal persuasive), his argument on testimony must stand largely by itself, which I believe it is hard-pressed to do (for reasons I supply in the main text). I believe the second part of the essay may be supplemental, in case readers are not completely persuaded by the first (with, e.g., Tucker, "Miracles," 388–89).

214. Evans, Narrative, 154; Evans and Manis, Philosophy of Religion, 130; see also Beckwith, Argument,

28–32; Larmer, Water, 36; Taliaferro and Hendrickson, "Racism," 427–28; Holder, "Hume," 57; Kelly,

"Miracle," 49; cf. similarly Levine, "Belief," 135.

215. Larson, "Centuries," 87. Hume's attempted "dismissal of testimony without examination" fails even in his own essay (see Taylor, Hume, 13).

216. Kreeft and Tacelli, Handbook, 111. Cf. Cooper, "Ventriloquism," 27: Hume believed it impossible to trust witnesses to miracles, "since the reporting of a miracle as truth could essentially be taken as proof of a source's weakness."

217. Even though Hume assumes that there is uniform experience against any miraculous event, at one point he does appear to admit that an event that he treats as a miracle could be accepted as possible in principle. Depending on how various elements in his argument are construed, this concession could be understood as constituting an inconsistency in his argument (Johnson, Hume, 6, 19). The burden of proof of course rests (at least lightly) on claims of inconsistency, and concessions may be merely tactical.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

claimed experience of the latter. If experience is reliable in knowing that water is normally not turned to wine, why would it not be reliable in recognizing when water is turned to wine?218

Hume avers "that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle,"219 unless the authentic miracle would be less extraordinary than the inaccuracy or deceptiveness of its reporter.220 Far from maintaining openness to this possibility that a reporter could be sufficiently reliable to establish such a claim, however, Hume essentially excludes it in practice. He grants in principle that one might accept witnesses who were unquestionably reliable, claiming public events, and would have much to lose by lying; yet scholars note that in practice he rejects individual testimonies that, so far as anyone can discern by normal means of inquiry, would meet this very criterion.221 Hume's denial of any historical eyewitnesses qualified to testify about miracles is no more than a bare assertion offered on his own authority; by contrast, one of his early detractors offered more than one hundred pages of argument in response to such claims, which one might hope could count for more than bare assertions.222

Further, some of Hume's criteria for witnesses' acceptability are too vague to quantifiably support his case: he insists that witnesses be highly reputable, with much to lose by lying. One may assent to these demands in principle, but Hume appears to implement them in a tendentious way. How highly reputable is highly reputable? How much to lose is too much to lose? If one adopts his criteria for witnesses to the maximal possible extent, one might choose to rule out any historical testimony to any event.223 As I shall observe, Hume does in fact rule out highly reputable witnesses with much to lose, as defined by normal standards used in 218. Levine, Problem, 126 (agreeing with Kellenberger, "Miracles," 148n).

219. Hume, Miracles, 32; idem, "Miracles," 33. Probably due to criticisms, Hume more charitably later revised this claim in his 1767 edition to "no testimony . . . has ever amounted to," recognizing that his argument could not actually rule out the possibility of sufficient evidence for miracles (Sober, "Proposal,"

492).

220. Granted that some claims are surprising, it might be equally surprising for such claims to be invented (Hambourger, "Belief," 597, illustrating on 598 with uncommon names being uncommon in fabrication as well as in reality), at least among multiple independent witnesses. One might think of disciples claiming that the eschatological resurrection had been inaugurated in their teacher—an astonishing claim to report, whether true or false.

221. Noted, e.g., in Polkinghorne, Science and Providence, 54–55; Swinburne, "Introduction," 13;

Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 97. Besides Christian claims, Hume, Miracles, 42; idem, "Miracles,"

38–39, employs the very strength of Tacitus's report about Vespasian to show that even the strongest testimony must be rejected (as a "gross" and "palpable falsehood"); Brown, Miracles, 88, notes how Hume's language is designed to parallel that of Christian apologists for the Gospels. Some of the testimonies

Hume rejected are plausible, however, even on strictly naturalistic terms (see Flew, "Arguments," 50–51, and regarding Vespasian, 52–53; cf. Keller, Miracles, 64–65). Tacitus himself has the physicians give a naturalistic interpretation (noted in Johnson, Hume, 85–86, though I am less convinced and suspect that Tacitus may have been also). See discussion below of the particular case of Jansenists.

222. See McGrew, "Argument," 651–52 (citing Samuel Chandler's response to Annet, regarding Jesus's resurrection). For Hume's critics, see further Okello, Case, 129–39.

223. Colwell, "Miracles and History," 10.

Are Miracles Possible?

court, suggesting that he applies these criteria tendentiously. Moreover, Hume requires witnesses to be of "unquestioned good sense," but this standard proves impossible to meet, since Hume appears to question the good sense of anyone who claims to have witnessed miracles.224 By contrast, if we employ such criteria in the ordinary sense of their everyday usage, we end up with plenty of witnesses that we might consider reputable and sensible, but whom he dismisses as unsatisfactory.

If he simply will not deem anyone's testimony satisfactory, it seems somewhat disingenuous to expect his critics to go to the trouble of evaluating witnesses before he informs them of this caveat.225

Again, he seems to employ an a priori definition to exclude the need for examination: defining a miracle as the sort of event "that has never been observed," he simply dismisses or ignores the perspective of all those who claim to have seen, or believe the claims of others to have seen, such events.226 Analogously, as noted above, he excludes from being a miracle anything that can be observed to occur in the ordinary course of nature, yet he excludes the possibility of anything that does not occur in the ordinary course of nature.227 This sort of reasoning simply restates his presupposition rather than offers an argument. This mere reformulation of his own presuppositions is not, as one scientist and theologian points out, the open-minded posture normally appreciated in scientific endeavor.228

Hume must assume the error or lack of integrity of many eyewitnesses to maintain his theory, yet he lacks grounds independent of his theory to accuse eyewitnesses of deception.229 (This concern is important in view of the significant number of testimonies collected later in this book and elsewhere.) Hume essentially dismisses all witnesses as "fools or liars," as one scholar puts it.230 Yet this suspicion of witnesses is arbitrary, dependent entirely on Hume's theory and increasingly

224. Ibid.

225. Ibid.; cf. Taylor, Hume, 23, 44–45. Colwell, "Miracles and History," 11, suggests Saul of Tarsus had much to lose, an opinion difficult to doubt (cf. Paul the persecutor in 1 Cor 15:9; Gal 1:13–14;

Phil 3:6–7; 1 Tim 1:13; Paul suffering for Christ in Rom 16:7; 1 Cor 4:11–12; 15:31–32; 2 Cor 1:8–9;

4:8–11; 6:4–10; 11:23–33; Phil 1:7, 13; 1 Thess 1:6; 2:2, 15–16; Phlm 1, 9, 10, 13, 23). Some question the (perhaps socially elitist) criterion of witnesses having high reputation (cf. McGrew, "Miracles," 3.2.1).

226. Cf. Johnson, Hume, 19.

227. Thus a Humean could grant, under compulsion of sufficient evidence, that a claimed miracle occurred, but then redefine laws of nature so as to except the event from being genuinely miraculous and counter to nature (cf. the summary in Martin, "Historians on Miracles," 413).

228. Polkinghorne, Science and Providence, 55. Many of Hume's views (e.g., the earth possibly having grown from a comet [Force, "Interest," 195]) are incompatible with modern science but reflect the science of their era.

229. While arguing that miracles in themselves do not convey meaning, Phillips, "Miracles," 35, also notes that skeptics lack grounds to accuse witnesses of deception. Ward, "Believing," 745, notes that, contrary to Hume, "the probability that one is deluded or deceived in observation is sometimes extremely low" when one has sufficient reporters.

230. Cramer, "Miracles," 136–37. On the potential falsehood of witnesses, see Hume, Miracles, 27; even of normally respectable witnesses, 29; on miracle witnesses as deceived or deceivers (more than other kinds of witnesses), 32, 34, 36–37, 52–55 (cf. 38: "nothing strange" that people "lie in all ages"; 39:

"fools"; 43: "knavery and credulity"; 52: "knavery and folly").

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

implausible as the number of normally reliable witnesses increases.231 His warning that people are prone to credulity and deception does not apply equally to all individuals, so one cannot dismiss all claims without evaluating them on a caseby-case basis.232 Using this standard, and a priori suspicion of any antecedently improbable information, would undermine ordinary communication.233 If Hume counts the unlikelihood of an occurrence against a witness telling the truth (too simplistic an approach), some counter that a witness's "lie" could take many forms, making any particular form improbable.234 While this argument would not prove much in the case of a single witness, it becomes quite substantive once multiple independent witnesses are involved (see my discussion of multiple independent witnesses below).

Moreover, Hume essentially counts the unusual character of miracles against their probability twice, since by requiring witnesses of "unquestioned good sense" he narrows the pool of potential witnesses to those who, recognizing that miracles are unusual, would have surely demanded more than usual evidence (at least with respect to those sorts of miracle claims involving what does not happen naturally).235 What would happen if we were to apply Hume's logic consistently to other areas of inquiry?

Consequences of Such Epistemic Demands for Other Disciplines For this sort of case (eyewitness testimony for miracle claims), Hume thinks it unreasonable for people to depend on testimonial evidence, requiring instead direct experience.236 The fairness of this criterion should be questioned, however; those with such direct experience are in this case (but not in most others) considered unable to be trusted by others. Presumably Hume himself lacked this personal experience, but his uniformity argument generalizes from this lack in his immediate circle to that of all humanity.237 On Hume's epistemology, "uniform

231. Cf. here Weintraub, "Credibility," 371.

232. Breggen, "Miracle Reports," 6, complaining that Hume's argument here is "much too general" to carry weight. Idem, "Seeds," provides a significant list of Hume's overgeneralizations that a case-by-case approach would have refuted: thus he should have recognized that "not all people are required to be highly educated to be considered credible witnesses, not all people are equally prone to credulity," and so forth.

233. One would trust only the information of which one did not need to be informed; see Schlesinger,

"Credibility," 121, as followed by Weintraub, "Credibility," 360.

234. Cf. the argument in Holder, "Hume," 52; Schlesinger, "Credibility," 121; Weintraub, "Credibility,"

361.

235. See Breggen, "Scale," 451–52, developing the idea of Ward, "Miracles and Testimony," 134.

236. Hambourger, "Belief," 588. Is a miracle then true for one who experiences it directly but false for one who has only the testimony of one who has experienced it? Hume depended on Archbishop Tillotson's view that direct sensation is more dependable than others' testimony; some object that testimony from trained or specially qualified observers may in fact be more reliable than one's own observations (Taylor,

Hume, 6).

237. Mavrodes, "Hume," 175–76. Cf. Sider, "Methodology," 24, criticizing judging past witnesses based on one's own range of experience; cf. Sanday, "Miracles," 65. Cranston, Miracle, 172, notes that some skeptical doctors criticize other doctors for recognizing a cure at Lourdes, but when they see one themselves, their attitude changes completely.

Are Miracles Possible?

experience" involved passive recollection of a sequence of events known to oneself and possibly one's colleagues, and no more.238 Such a generalization rests on too small a sample size to be legitimate (as his own epistemology warned);239 while he may speak authoritatively about his own experience, how can he speak in this way for the entire human race?240 His own "uniform experience" can hardly be used to exclude the experience about which another person testifies.241 Hume's insistence on rejecting others' testimony without personal knowledge, following the egocentric approach of Cartesian rationalists and Pyrrhonian skeptics, stood in bold opposition to contemporary English science, which stressed communal research and knowledge.242 Not surprisingly, moderate empiricists generally viewed

Hume's rejection of testimony as irrational.243 Few today follow Hume's fairly thoroughgoing epistemological skepticism on other fronts; its survival with respect to the question of miracles may suggest the readiness of many to treat claims offered in religious contexts as a special category of lesser value than other sorts of claims.

Further, one critic rightly objects, "If Hume's criteria for accepting testimony as true were employed outside of miracle claims, we would probably have to dismiss the vast majority of what we believe we presently know about the past," since much of it depends on a single, untested source.244 This observation seems damaging to Hume's argument; he advances the argument in terms of "general principles about evidence, reasonable credibility, and the like," yet we clearly do not employ his approach outside of religion.245 Where events are not explained spiritually, even

238. Taylor, Hume, 26. Hume's historiographic approach here is inseparable from the premises assumed right in his intellectual era (Lonergan, Method, 222); his own mind, moreover, was more than what he conceived mind to involve, namely the linking of impressions by custom (ibid., 21). Smith,

"Introduction," 27, however, views Hume's fragmented approach as merely a reaction against Descartes's one-sided approach.

239. Mavrodes, "Hume," 176; Kelly, "Miracle," 49. Mavrodes takes the example of Jesus's resurrection; because this was a unique historical event, he argues, the odds of Hume having "caught that one anomalous event" are small ("Hume," 176). Hume's own epistemology allowed observation but limited the value of inductive inferences based on limited samples (Landesman, Epistemology, 136–37), though random, representative samples increase probability (ibid., 138–41).

240. Mavrodes, "Hume," 180.

241. Taylor, Hume, 10–11.

242. Burns, Debate, 16. Scientists pooled data, although science by its character works with larger patterns, not eccentric or exceptional cases. On this scientific movement and its opposition to some philosophic alternatives dominant on the Continent at the time, see 19–46.

243. Ibid., 179 (cf. also 215).

244. Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 97. Against those who argue that we must have direct personal knowledge rather than the secondary evidence of witnesses, Licona (117) follows William Lane

Craig in citing physicists' appeal to quarks and strings based on evidence without direct observation.

245. Mavrodes, "Hume," 168. Mavrodes also argues that nothing in his argument is specific to miracles or religious phenomena. Hume undoubtedly would reply (on the most common reading of Hume) that he treats miracles distinctively because they are violations of nature, but as I have noted, the definition begs the question. Defending Hume, Coleman, "Probability," 214, nevertheless concedes that he treats testimony for "religious miracles" more skeptically "than testimony to marvels." The difference between the two was precisely the claim of divine authorship for the former (Fosl, "Hume," 177). Defending

Hume by suggesting that he would accept direct communication from God to all humanity throughout the world, but regarded miracle testimonies as notoriously fallible (Fogelin, Defense, 29), sets the bar of

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

when they are otherwise unbelievable, historians normally accept or check them if witnesses are credible, rather than simply rejecting the testimony.246 Granted, this might not be the case for an isolated testimony if the events in question were particularly unusual, but it would certainly apply to multiple, independent ones.247

One might counter that Hume intends not to rule out all miracle testimony a priori but only to conclude that all miracle testimony in history so far had been untrustworthy.248 This would be, however, a judgment for which the evidence does not provide such a verdict without the support of his theory, and one that would be even more difficult to sustain, I believe, today.

As a more general methodological consideration, Hume's unduly strict form of empiricism values experience above testimony, yet the vast majority of our general knowledge depends on testimony (the report of others' experiences) rather than our own more limited personal experience.249 Granted that all eyewitness testimony is conditioned by observers' interpretations, jurors are expected to be able to infer significant aspects of events behind such testimony; without this assumption, the modern court system would collapse.250 Virtually all historical claims depend on interpreted testimony and other interpretations of evidence;251 most of us would not for that reason discard any possibility of inferring information about some past events based on our extant sources.

While this observation about testimony's value is most obviously true and relevant regarding history,252 it applies even to most of our knowledge of science.253

(It is less relevant to science, though, because scientific experiments, unlike more complex historical events, are repeatable in controlled settings.) The approach

Hume applies to miracles would, if applied equally strictly elsewhere, rule out acceptable evidence unreasonably high. (Certainly Christian theists would not agree to it; the promise of such a revelation in Christian teaching is eschatological and belated for such purposes; Mark 13:26.)

246. Kennedy, "Miracles," 20–21; note also here Ward, "Believing," 745. Kennedy, "Miracles," 11–14, notes the strong arguments of Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers for the value of testimony.

247. Criticizing Hume's epistemic failure to consider multiple sources, see Tucker, Knowledge, 51–52

(addressing historiography generally). Provided testimony to an anomaly could be shown to be genuinely independent (not a result of deliberate, deceptive collusion) it would become much more credible. Assuming the basic reliability of the Gospel traditions (see the argument and other sources in, e.g., Hengel, Mark;

Bauckham, Eyewitnesses; Keener, Historical Jesus), one could rule out the sort of anomalies reported there only on the premise that they cannot occur, whether as natural anomalies or, more often, as supernatural events. Rejection of the latter form usually presupposes doubt that a deity or force exists that could or would produce such phenomena.

248. Cf. Fogelin, Defense, 62.

249. Lawton, Miracles, 56 (citing George Campbell's 1762 critique of Hume's essay, which Hume acknowledged as "a fair treatment of his essay"); Helm, "Miraculous," 94–95 (comparing also Augustine

Confessions 6.5); Larson, "Centuries," 88.

250. Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 129.

251. For the dependence of history on witnesses' observations, see, e.g., Popper, Conjectures, 21.

252. As just noted, historiography depends on witnesses' observations (see, e.g., Popper, Conjectures,

21).

253. See discussion in Jaki, "Miracles and Physics"; Licona, Resurrection, 103. Even our expectation of events' probability based on nature's regularity tends to be founded on testimony from others (Ward,

"Miracles and Testimony," 133).

Are Miracles Possible?

any newly observed event incompatible with or challenging current scientific understanding of nature.254 Hume's skeptical approach would thus make scientific progress impossible.255 As one scholar points out, particle physicists have never verified a proton's decay, but this deficiency does not stultify investigation to detect proton decay.256 A physicist suggests that, even in its merely epistemic form, Hume's "argument can be used to prevent a scientist from believing another scientist who announces a major discovery" that violates earlier understandings.

Physicists do not follow Hume's approach; they were surprised by the announcement of "high temperature superconductivity," impossible as it appeared by current understandings, but they did not reject the claims.257 They investigated the claims to confirm or disconfirm them; although anomalies face stricter interrogation, they are frequently recognized "even before the advent of rival theories which can accommodate them."258 (Even outside this essay, Hume's epistemology effectively limits science to empirical generalization about past observations; though he does allow for probable inferences, he was not keen on scientific predictions.259)

Moreover, whatever may be said of Hume's relationship to physics, his epistemological arguments privileging norms over testimony do not allow the normal practice of historiography and legal testimony in their own spheres (as I shall note below). Yet these are the sorts of disciplines most often relevant to evaluating testimony, and are therefore more experienced in evaluating testimony than

Hume is. For example, even when we mistrust ancient historical sources on other points, we normally accept eyewitness testimony in them (though not always their interpretation),260 unless we have compelling reason not to do so. Is the existence of some fictitious information, usually outside eyewitness material, compelling reason to exclude all claims that do not fit our worldview? Historical events may be evaluated by analogy with kinds of historical events, but one can use this analogy to deny the miraculous only by presupposing that all historical testimony to miracles is invalid.

254. Jantzen, "Hume," 319–20; cf. Brooke, Science, 187.

255. Cf. Kuhn, Structure, 98–108, 154–55; on resistance to paradigm shifts in science, see Polanyi,

Knowledge, 138; Kuhn, Structure, 64–65, 107, 133, 169. Some of Hume's contemporaries already offered this critique of his approach (see Burns, Debate, 224), and one of his mid-twentieth-century defenders conceded that following Hume's approach here would unfortunately prevent scientific advances (Robinson,

"Causation," suggesting that scientists must thus sometimes ignore philosophy; as cited in Burns, Debate,

225). Taylor, Hume, 5, suggests that Hume was mocking the irrationality of Newtonian science as well as irrational religion.

256. Earman, Failure, 31.

257. Cramer, "Miracles," 136–37, condemning what he regards as the hidden religious "agendas of Hume and Flew, a willingness to call others [witnesses] fools or liars"; on science often being open to new observations correcting old ones, see also, e.g., Sober, "Proposal," 489; Weintraub, "Credibility," 369,

372. More than a century ago, Wilson, "Miracles," 10–11, observed that while we normally assimilate new data "through a process of analogy," often rejecting or ignoring what is not analogous, physical science does accommodate new discoveries.

258. Weintraub, "Credibility," 372; see discussion on paradigms in ch. 14.

259. Jones, Hobbes to Hume, 320–22.

260. E.g., Brown, Historians, 142, 146, on Megasthenes.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

Indeed, Hume does not follow this stringent approach to testimony in his own historiography.261 (It was Hume's historiography that made him famous in his own day,262 though the rise of critical historiography ultimately made his approach to historiography obsolete.263) Hume's epistemological approach, if followed to its logical conclusion, undercuts normal reasoning, including his own.264 One scholar explains that Hume's epistemology excludes all beliefs as irrational and unjustifiable, but notes that Hume explained that he himself lived by that perspective, itself no more than a belief, only when doing his philosophic work.265 Hume may have helpfully pinpointed the question of what factors could tip scales to allow belief in events that would normally not be believed,266 but in his polemic against uncritical credulity he uncritically rejected the sufficiency of any evidence. The evidence of testimony must be given ways to surmount prior improbabilities; otherwise "there is no way to underwrite the sorts of inferences made in everyday life and science," such as a newspaper report of a winning lottery ticket (an illustration developed at greater length below).267

Hume versus Normal Logic regarding Witnesses While claiming logic, Hume's approach to testimony contravenes the form of logic normally applied to the value of witnesses. Just as one may appeal to the "regularity of nature" (revising our understanding of that regularity periodically to accommodate new discoveries), one may appeal to regularities involved in how we otherwise evaluate legal testimony or historical evidence. Hume's argument against miracles privileges the regularity of nature against the regularity of human evidence, while presupposing against allowing for divine causation.268

When Hume cites the regularity of nature against the possibility of witnesses erring, he is weighing apples against oranges. Scientific induction does indeed work from a much greater pool of data than historical evidence does,

261. Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 97 (following Habermas, Risen Jesus, 7–8).

262. Tucker, "Miracles," 373.

263. Ibid., 374.

264. Note the harsh critique by Bertrand Russell, in History of Western Philosophy, 698, cited in Brown,

Philosophy, 70–71; on a more popular current level, see D'Souza, Christianity, 183.

265. Taylor, Hume, 24–25. Lonergan, Understanding, 38, 231, points out that Hume's view of knowledge involved sensory impressions connected by habit, yet limiting knowledge to this approach cannot explain Hume's own epistemology. Kant endeavored to transcend "Hume's experiential atomism"

(idem, Insight, 340). To follow such atomism rigorously (something Hume himself would not have done) would make normal human life impossible; whereas infantile experience consists of unconnected sensory impressions, fuller human development involves connections and constructions concerning causation (for this developmental approach, see, e.g., Zaphiropoulos, "Sullivan," 428–29). The imperfection of our knowledge concerning connections should not lead to the abandonment of attempts to refine this knowledge.

266. Cf. Keller, Miracles, 63.

267. Earman, Failure, 33.

268. See Beckwith, "History and Miracles," 95–96 (following Swinburne, Miracle, 41–48, and others),

98; cf. Mozley, Lectures, 98.

Are Miracles Possible?

but it addresses different sorts of questions.269 Science is meant to address nature's regularities, not anomalies, which scientific theories usually seek to accommodate within some higher regularities; history must deal with particulars, including the idiosyncrasies of human personalities whose behavior is not always predictable. If miracles are divine actions and not pure anomalies, they must be investigated on a case-by-case basis or in tandem with analogous cases (other miracles),270 rather than weighed against the ordinary patterns of nature. Historiographic concern for testimony is thus far more relevant for investigating miracles than statements about norms, to which miracles are by most definitions not bound.

Perhaps the sphere that weighs testimony most deliberately is that of the courts.

Because of the stakes involved, legal approaches to testimony tend to reflect rigorous discipline, and are applicable to the matters at hand.271 Thus some statisticians cite against Hume the work of mathematician Charles Babbage (1792–1871), originator of the modern computer, regarding witnesses: where a significant number of witnesses agree without prior collusion, an event's probability increases sufficiently to overturn any biases against it.272 (Babbage formulated his mathematical critique against Hume.273) Too many variables (not least in interpreting Hume) skew the precision of mathematical probability approaches to Hume,274 but they do illustrate that Hume's view of witnesses is inadequate.

Already in Hume's day, it was clear to some that he failed to take into adequate account that the confluence of multiple, independent, and reliable witnesses

269. Cf. Lonergan, Method, 179–80, 219–20, 228–30 (including observations about the different forms of verification in each); history and literature emphasize particularity rather than physics' universals (cf. Meyer, Realism, xi). Flew, "Evidence," justifies the rejection of historical claims that contravene scientific claims, but this approach again appeals to immutable natural law in a way that presupposes nontheism (for two critiques of Flew's overall approach, see Larmer, Water, 100–102; Larson, "Centuries,"

98–100; cf. also Wallace, "Hume" [e.g., 230, 237]); challenging Flew's privileging of scientific over historical knowledge, rather than reckoning with their objectives and subjects addressed, cf. Wallace,

"Hume," 233–34.

270. Cf. Sanday, "Miracles," 65: most of the samples gathered for induction involve ordinary cases, but our lack of "experience of His extraordinary action" allows for "no induction to preclude His use of exceptional means." I will suggest later in the book that we do not lack comparable experiences; I agree here with Sanday, though, that one cannot rule out exceptional cases based on averages or means.

271. See Beckwith, Argument, 122–33.

272. Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 104–5, citing Bartholomew, Belief, 92–98 (and Zabell,

"Probabilistic Analysis," 344–45), and Babbage, Treatise (see esp. Babbage, "Argument"); see also Licona,

Resurrection, 149–50. Swinburne, "Introduction," 13–14, advances this corroboration of independent witnesses against the probability calculations of Owen, "Probabilities," who considers only a single witness; for the value in principle of multiple witnesses, see also Mackie, "Miracles and Testimony," 93. Babbage also invented the speedometer and locomotive cowcatcher.

273. King-Farlow, "Insights," 209, 212–14. In the same article King-Farlow uses Aquinas's nuanced approach to miracles to challenge the approach of both Hume and (against Hume) Babbage, who do not distinguish levels of probability for various witness claims with respect to various miracles.

274. Others also challenge the adequacy of mathematical tests, even Bayesian probabilities, concerning miracle claims, for other reasons (e.g., Tucker, "Miracles," 382, though noting that nonmathematical tests remain).

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

increases the probability of testimony's accuracy.275 In the case of multiple, independent witnesses, one no longer requires extraordinary proof to secure a probability against prior improbabilities.276 If Hume's challenge against individual testimony was in some respects questionable, he did not even address the force of multiple testimony, which seriously changes the probability calculus.277

Although debates about probability were central to debates about testimony and miracles in Hume's day,278 one of Hume's modern critics charges that his approach to miracle reflects "a crude view of induction and probability." He notes that Hume's approach could have been corrected by the more sophisticated inductive reasoning approach of Rev. Thomas Bayes, but because Bayes's work was not published until 1763, Hume lacked access to it in his essay.279 Indeed, Bayes's essay was first published by Richard Price, who employed it against Hume's own doubts concerning induction.280 Price, largely forgotten today, was in their day nearly as famous as Hume in Britain, and more so in the American colonies.281

Hume acknowledged that Price's challenge was "plausible and ingenious" and might require him to rethink his position, but he never revised his essay in light of it.282 In more recent times, Bayesian probability calculations have been offered both in support of and against Hume,283 but on the whole it seems likelier that 275. Earman, "Bayes," 305. Hume's failure may be deliberate, since he would have known that Locke appealed to the cumulative force of multiple witnesses about miracles being performed by one person

(for this argument in Locke, see Burns, Debate, 68–69). The exponentially cumulative value of multiple, independent witnesses was already recognized, though not mathematically formalized, in ancient Roman law (Tucker, "Miracles," 381); cf. the need for multiple witnesses in Jewish and Christian circles in Num

35:30; Deut 17:6; 19:15; 11QTemple LXI, 6–7; LXIV, 8–9; CD IX, 17–19; 2 Cor 13:1; 1 Tim 5:19; Matt

18:16; Josephus Life 256; Ant. 4.219; m. R.H. 1:7; 2:6; b. Sanh. 37b, bar.; p. Git. 4:1, §2; Smith, Parallels,

169; Daube, "Witnesses"; most extensively, Van Vliet, No Single Testimony; though some may have found ways to circumvent this (different solutions in Rabinovitch, "Parallels"; Neusner, "Testimony"). Four witnesses are mandatory in Qur'an 24.4, 13.

276. A point often noted (cf., e.g., the summary in Sober, "Proposal," 491).

277. Holder, "Hume," 53.

278. Sober, "Proposal," 487.

279. Earman, "Bayes," 305. Some argue that, Hume's work being published before Bayes's work, Hume's work cannot readily be understood in such terms (Gower, "Probability," 17; cf. Coleman, "Probability").

But since Hume complained that Locke and others failed to address probability in sufficient detail, and since Hume was offering a probability argument, Earman, Failure, 25, contends that it is fair to hold Hume to a standard of logic that is legitimate even if not his own (cf. Holder, "Hume," 50). Some of Hume's early critics already argued that mathematical probability calculations applied better to some life situations than others (Burns, Debate, 181). For Bayesianism in science today, see Howson, "Bayesianism."

280. Dawid and Gillies, "Analysis," 58; Sober, "Proposal," 487. Gower, "Probability," 17, dates the publication to 1764 and doubts that Hume would have known of it before Price published on the subject in 1767. For the 1768 second edition of Price's essay, see Price, "Dissertation." Price was clearly more

Bayesian than Hume, who probably would not have even understood the dense calculations involved or their relevance (Gower, "Probability," 18; Earman, Failure, 25).

281. Earman, Failure, 24.

282. Coleman, "Probability," 196; Earman, Failure, 25 (though Earman thinks that Hume made one revision). Hume did manage to avoid being pulled into responses to his critics ("Life," 235).

283. Some have used Bayesian statistics to support Hume (e.g., Gillies, "Proof," 255, claiming that Hume's case "can be rigorously proved"; Millican, "Theorem"; Sobel, "Theorem," especially the proof on

Are Miracles Possible?

Hume, who lacked access to this statistical method, constructed an argument that fails to satisfy it.284 As suggested above, the variety of factors that must be taken into account (not least the precise interpretation of what Hume meant) mitigate somewhat the force of such mathematical argumentation,285 but they do illustrate that Hume's claims of probability are fairly vague and conjectural.286 They also illustrate, with this approach's supporters, that the probability of reliability is very high in multiple, independent testimony from persons normally deemed reliable.

While witnesses might not always interpret events in the soundest manner, they may often prove better positioned to evaluate the events than academicians who merely dismiss eyewitnesses' claims based on our inherited assumptions.

Hume cites laws of nature against testimony, but apart from questions noted above concerning whether "laws" of nature limit divine action, we have not merely one testimony or several testimonies but in many cases "a 'convergence of independent probabilities.'"287 Detailed probability calculations show that even a very low a priori against miracles can be overcome by the sort of evidence available in multiple independent testimony.288

Moreover, even the reasoning behind Hume's treatment of probability appears to offer the wrong sort of probability equation. One cannot decide the probability

236–37). Millican, "Theorem," 495, offers the analogy of a rare disease afflicting only one in a million people, and a person who tests positive for it in a test that is 99.9 percent accurate, arguing that only 0.1 percent of those tested positive will have the disease. Others, however, note that Bayesian method can argue against Hume (Mavrodes, "Theorem"; Earman, "Bayes," 305–6; DePoe, "Bayesian Approach,"

230–31; Otte, "Treatment," 156–57; Tucker, "Miracles," 374; cf. Earman, "Hume"); Earman, Failure, 30, even argues "that the Bayes rule for assigning prior probabilities makes the existence of Hume miracles a certainty." On a common reading, Hume apparently gave miracles a zero probability, possible only because of his a priori assumption about nature's uniformity (Levine, Problem, 34; cf. Taylor, Hume, 9). Sobel,

Logic, 338, suggests that Hume rated the prior probability of miracles as infinitesimal, thus ruling out any evidential testimony; DePoe, "Bayesian Approach," 233, replies that even drawing an atom randomly from the universe yields a finite probability (roughly 1 in 1080) and (on 234) doubts that reasons exist to ascribe "infinitesimal probabilities to any event" (as perhaps opposed to impossibilities or low but finite probabilities). The "infinitesimal probability" of miracles would simply restate presuppositions like affirming their impossibility would. In any case, Licona, Resurrection, 119, observes that statistical probability arguments cannot address unique events.

284. Gower, "Probability," 29, observes that "many of Hume's claims about probabilities and their assessment are not consistent with Bayesianism." Bayesianism certainly works against his "minimalist claim that no actual testimony for a religious miracle has ever amounted to a probability" (Earman, "Bayes," 302).

285. Coleman, "Probability," 195–96, sidesteps Bayesian calculations on the ground that they rest on Pascal's calculus of chance, whereas Hume was using Baconian probability (using eliminative induction) independent of such calculus. Advocates of Baconian probability remain a minority (ibid., 197–98, while nevertheless appealing to this method to defend Hume). Even if we subtract those who do not meet

Hume's qualifications, however, we have plenty of examples of miracle claims remaining, so Hume's argument would fail on these grounds. Others insist that Bayesian rather than Baconian probabilities are the relevant ones (Langtry, "Probability," 70), particularly when evaluating the larger success of Hume's argument. Gower, "Probability," 24–25, 29, thinks a Bernoullian approach is closer to Hume's intention.

286. Despite invoking "probability," Hume makes little use of probability (even in the form already known in his day) in his argument (Gower, "Probability," 28).

287. Beckwith, "Epistemology," 99 (quoting Cardinal Newman).

288. McGrew, "Argument," 641–42.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

of a proposed supernatural event by simply dividing the number of known miracles in history by the number of estimated events in history, yielding an apparently infinitesimal number. One would rather need to establish the probability of a particular claimed event by taking into account evidence for the event and the probability of a deity interested in people producing such an event.289 Our ability to quantify factors such as the probability of divine action might be extremely limited, but simply excluding it by presupposition is circular reasoning. Hume's argument on intrinsic probability largely echoes the earlier case of English deist

William Wollaston (also spelled Woolston),290 which is unfortunately not well conceived.291 His dependence on earlier arguments may help account for the work's oft-noted inconsistency from his approach elsewhere.292

For miracles, as I note below, Hume presupposes a standard of proof so high that any evidence is effectively ruled out in advance. That is, Hume so frames his position that he renders it unfalsifiable293—and therefore not tenable for public discourse by traditional standards of logic. Unfortunately, this heads-I-win, tailsyou-lose form of argument remains popular even today, even with respect to miracles. For example, roughly two decades ago I asked one professor, who was dismissing evidence for miracles, if he would believe in supernatural activity if someone were raised from the dead in front of him. He responded, consistent to his approach, that he would not. Interestingly, some doubt that even Hume, being an empiricist, would have insisted that the person was not raised from the dead if he himself witnessed it.294 (Science also recognizes a range of random, unpredictable outcomes even on the impersonal level of physics. In the case of credible miracle reports, some might explain them as random anomalies simply because these interpreters arbitrarily exclude a pattern of divine causation as a legitimate explanation.) 289. Collins, God of Miracles, 149–50. A number of scholars contend that God's freedom makes it impossible to calculate whether God will act in a situation (Licona and Van der Watt, "Historians and Miracles," 5).

290. See Burns, Debate, 89–92. On Wollaston, see also Deconinck-Brossard, "Acts of God," 372.

291. See Burns, Debate, 92–93.

292. For the inconsistency, cf., e.g., Brown, Miracles, 168; Gwynne, Action, 171; Smith, "Introduction,"

46–47.

293. Cf. Geisler, "Miracles," 83; Corduan, "Miracle," 110. Larmer, Water, 83–87, contends that worldviews are difficult to falsify but that they can be falsified selectively at points without discarding more accurate elements; he suggests that pure naturalism (in its traditional form) can be falsified regarding its claim that energy cannot be created.

294. Smart, Philosophers, 32. But Brümmer, Pray, 84, suggests that Hume may have simply taken it as "an extraordinary or inexplicable anomaly," refusing to factor the possibility of divine causation into the equation. (Given human nature, which should also be "Humean" nature, Brümmer might be right in theory, and Smart in practice.) That the relevance of prayer in the name of Jesus could be excluded from consideration while human interventions are not again reflects starting assumptions. A Humean would be more apt to trust direct sensory experience of a miracle than testimony to it (cf. Levine, Problem, 131), but many would still distinguish the truth of an event from the interpretation of supernatural causation

(ibid., 159, on foundationalists).

Are Miracles Possible?

Rejecting Unusual and Rare Events?

Hume cites the "uniform" experience of modern people against miracles.295 As I have noted, Hume implies that he uses the inductive approach characteristic of empiricism; yet ruling out new evidence on the basis of supposed uniform experience is hardly inductive. Scholars identify various problems with his approach;

I will address the first of these at some length before turning to others. First, as I shall show later in the book, there is no such uniform experience against miracles; whether or not one trusts the claims of tens of millions of people that they have experienced miracles, so many claims, at least some of them substantive, offer a rather vigorous challenge to simply assuming a "uniform experience" against miracles.296 The uniformity argument essentially rejects all miracle reports, which are inconvenient to the uniformity premise; yet such reports are very widely claimed, an observation that I shall document at greater length in subsequent chapters. Far from the spirit we normally associate with intellectual inquiry, a priori rejection of all these claims declares victory by fiat rather than by fair exploration.

An argument that a miracle is never probable enough to allow any evidence to be cited in support of it must circularly presuppose that miracles have never been known to happen. Should testimony that would otherwise be accepted as reliable be rejected for an event because it is extremely unusual by the standards of one's or one's control group's experience?297 Should we grade the probability of testimony according to the frequency of an event, so that an otherwise reliable witness who claims to have gone fishing is to be believed, but not the same witness claiming that she won an Olympic medal (at the risk of eliminating some Olympic medalists)?298 Again, one cannot simply rule out miracles based on all of human experience, contrary to Hume's suggestion, because human experience claims many examples of miracles, the point Hume wishes to challenge.

295. E.g., Hume, Miracles, 31. One could argue less controversially but also less persuasively for excluding all kinds of extraordinary events based on the experience of ordinary ones, but this argument both fails to reckon with the existence of some extraordinary events and the fact that it is an argument designed to keep evidence for miracles from being heard, since they are by definition extraordinary (cf.

Tonquédec, Miracles, 13).

296. Some scholars suggest that even if one were to rule out miracles today, an argument that the past must conform to the present uniformity of human experience might rule out dinosaurs (fossils support them, but testimony supports miracles) or, in matters of kind, the big bang. If one allows evidence to challenge the assumption of uniformity in such cases, one should also allow it in the matter now in question; if one limits uniformity only to what is naturally possible (not to particular human experiences), one again returns to the question of whether one can rule out divine action a priori. For this argument, see

Beckwith, "History and Miracles," 96–97; Geisler, "Miracles," 79 (regarding the big bang; also in idem,

Miracles, 80); Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 98–99; idem, Resurrection, 140–41; Craig, Faith, 153

(esp. against Troeltsch). Explaining and defending Hume's use of analogic probability, as well as adapting it in light of questions Hume failed to explore, see Coleman, "Probability," 203–7. For the current creation of miracles from the quantum flux differing from a unique creation ex nihilo in the big bang model, see

Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 40–41.

297. See the criticisms of Larson, "Centuries," 89; Ward, "Believing," 745.

298. Or one who claims to have gone waterskiing over one who claims that she did her PhD dissertation on African-American women's history at the University of Paris (my wife did the latter, but not the former)?

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

Granted, reports of unusual events must be more carefully examined than reports of ordinary ones,299 but it is methodologically fallacious to correlate the unusualness of an event with "the unreliability of a report" concerning it.300 Should one appeal to the general regularity of current events to judge special events in the past, while ignoring special events (at least what are regarded as anomalies) that are exceptions to that observed regularity today?301 To argue against miracles on the supposition that they never happen, no matter who claims them, is circular.

Yet to argue against miracles based on their mere rareness would, as one critic observes, exclude rare events that are attested as having happened. This critic offers the example of someone "being dealt a perfect bridge hand," against which he calculates the odds as "1,635,013,559,600 to 1," noting that someone in his circle was dealt this hand.302

Likewise, Life reported an extremely improbable event, this one conceivably in a religious context (for those who regard such contexts as particularly problematic): on March 1, 1950, all fifteen members of a church choir arrived late for choir rehearsal scheduled at 7:15 p.m., all for distinct reasons (e.g., one's car failed to start). That church building exploded at 7:25 p.m., and their lateness prevented any lives from being lost. With the probability of these separate events coinciding being as low as about one in a million, one scholar argues, Hume's argument might force him to reject the magazine's testimony.303

One could well quibble over some of these precise estimates, but the point is that rare events do happen, and excluding them based on probability would require the exclusion of concrete evidence supporting them. One might aver that a rare sort of event, if it were a possible event, might not be expected as likely at a single, randomly selected time, yet would expect that given sufficient selections over time the improbable event would surface (say, the drawing of one black marble among 9,999 white ones).304 By definition, the extranormal is rarer than usual human experience, but that constitutes no argument that it is never plausible, given

299. With, e.g., Evans, Narrative, 159 (suggesting epistemic caution without rejection); earlier, Bernard,

"Miracle," 395 (noting that sufficient attestation can overcome this reservation); cf. Hume, Miracles, 26.

300. Ward, "Believing," 745.

301. Geisler, Miracles, 81, on the fallacy of "appealing to the general to rule out a particular event," arguing against an argument of Flew. I note claims to such special events in chs. 7–12, 15, and part of ch.

14. Assumptions of uniformity generally uncritically reflect the interpreter's experience or that of her own milieu (Lonergan, Method, 226).

302. Geisler, "Miracles," 79; against using a phenomenon's rareness to dispute its attestation, see also

Craig, Faith, 151. Beckwith, "History and Miracles," 92–93 (also idem, "Epistemology," 96; Argument,

33), notes that "the odds of being dealt a royal flush are 0.15 × 10-5; in front of witnesses, Beckwith's friend was dealt this hand playing poker. Should one reject the testimonies based on the occurrence's improbability?

303. Beckwith, "History and Miracles," 92, offering the calculation. Such calculations of probability cannot easily account for all possible factors, which at this remove from 1950 can no longer be readily reconstructed (one assumes that the choir members were not all habitually late to rehearsals, since the story would not then have appeared newsworthy), but such illustrations, of which other examples might be adduced, emphasize that extraordinarily improbable specific events do occur.

304. Evans, Narrative, 154; idem, "Judgment," 197.

Are Miracles Possible?

sufficient evidence of it occurring (such as witnesses attesting the drawing of the black marble).305 The probability of numbers coming up in a particular way in a series of hurls of the dice might be one in a thousand, but we do not therefore aver that there is only a 0.1 percent chance that a witness who claims these numbers is telling the truth.306 (Still, divine context is what makes miracles probable.)

One of Hume's earliest critics on miracles, Richard Price, argued that the odds of a particular winning number in a lottery may be 10-6, yet we still believe the report that someone has won.307 One scholar, originally persuaded by Hume but finally convinced that his argument fails,308 retells this argument in modern terms. If the New York Times announced that a particular Mr. Smith won the lottery, the odds that this individual won the lottery (say, one in a million) are less than the odds that the Times made a mistake (say, one in ten thousand). On Hume's apparent reasoning, the probability that the Times is correct would thus be only one in a thousand.309 The genuinely relevant question is not whether the Times's fallibility exceeds the odds of this particular person winning, but just the reliability of the Times in reporting winners—hence (on this estimate) ten thousand times likelier correct than not.310

Similarly, the odds that a stranger lies about his or her name are higher than the odds of a given stranger having a particularly unusual name.311 For example, there is a significant probability that my wife is currently the only person, among the world's more than six billion people, who bears the name Médine Moussounga Keener. Should a Humean upon learning her name conclude that she is lying about her name? Conjoining even a few statements about oneself, such as birth date and address, provide extreme improbabilities;312 the existence of any one of us with our specific genetic combination is far more improbable still. Hume's "principle of relative likelihood," if it were applied in such a mechanistic way, would have to be deemed absurd.

Against such objections, Hume's real argument may involve not the improbability of a particular event, but of a particular kind of event.313 Thus some people

305. See similarly Johnson, Hume, 72. Tucker, "Miracles," 373, notes the difference between the probability of a particular miracle occurring and that of "some miracle" occurring. Fitzgerald, "Miracles," 61, argues that rareness is not necessary in the definition of miracle, provided that an event clearly communicates personal intelligent design.

306. Burns, Debate, 93. If the numbers were predicted in advance rather than random and reported later, the probability would decline, unless the roll of the dice was fixed; prediction miracles would fall into this latter category of probability, which can be dismissed a priori only on the belief that prediction miracles could not happen (i.e., based on atheism, deism, or some but not most versions of theism).

307. Dawid and Gillies, "Analysis," 59.

308. Hambourger, "Belief," 587.

309. Ibid., 591–92.

310. Ibid., 598. See also Licona, Resurrection, 144–45, against Hume's antecedent probability argument.

311. Hambourger, "Belief," 592 (noting on 598 that some combinations of names appear only once in one hundred million times, making the odds thus one in 10-8).

312. Ibid., 598.

313. This distinction played heavily in even supporters' critiques of Bishop Joseph Butler's apologetic

(Brown, Miracles, 62, specifying Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone's concern; though, as elsewhere noted

[e.g., Baxter, Healing, 23], Gladstone was skeptical of Hume's approach to miracles). Butler's approach was

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

reasonably counter the analogy of the lottery by pointing out that an event of this kind (someone winning) is assured, whereas events like miracles are improbable.314

Unfortunately, while the issue may in fact be kinds of events rather than specific events, this counterargument against miracles presupposes what it claims to prove, since miracles are improbable only on nontheistic premises.315 One objection to the lottery analogy is that whereas a particular individual winning the lottery is merely improbable, it is not incredible, since someone may win the lottery. By contrast, it is argued, "That an elephant flew over London yesterday is incredible."316

Granted that the latter is incredible, it would not be incredible if a deity were known to make elephants fly in other cases or to be the kind of deity we would have good reason to believe might make them fly.317 No such deity is reported, but reports of other naturally incredible events (as well as merely unusual ones) are often attributed to deities.

Thus the question of kinds of events should be framed thus: "How frequently are reports of similar miracles, given in similar situations, true?"318 Clearly many miracle claims are not true, but many other claims would be deemed true by normal means of inquiry if the possibility is not a priori excluded (I defer this discussion for chs. 13–15). I will survey some such reports later in the book (chs. 8–12); renormally fairly reasoned, however; see Burns, Debate, 111–14, 117–20, 125–30, and passim. For the validity of the lottery example and the like for relevant probability assessments, see Langtry, "Probability," 69–70.

314. Dawid and Gillies, "Analysis," 59; cf. Schlesinger, "Miracles," 222 (some events are "bound to happen anyhow"). They take the probability of a miracle, for the sake of argument, as 10-6 (62), and the probability of reliable witnesses falsely reporting miracles (because of deception, hallucination, or other factors), as higher than that (63). This generalization, however, fails to reckon with the vast number of concrete examples with multiple witnesses, where the probability of reliable witnesses reporting miracles falsely is much lower.

315. With, e.g., Beckwith, Argument, 35. Dawid and Gillies, "Analysis," 64–65, also recognize that for theists miracles are probable rather than improbable; hence, miracles become more likely than the deception of all witnesses to them. Smart, Swinburne, and others (Kellenberger, "Miracles," 149) would treat "violation" miracles as "non-repeatable" exceptions to laws of nature, that is, events that cannot be replicated, presumably because they involve personal agency. Replication is likewise impossible in the case of paranormal anthropological experiences, as in Grindal, "Heart," 76, though he explains this experience subjectively. One cannot use the "principle of relative likelihood" to argue that testimony for a miracle is false, since "this is," as Hambourger, "Belief," 597, notes, "just what we wanted to use the principle of relative likelihood to discover" (cf. Gower, "Probability," 27–28). One can no more calculate the natural probability for a unique supernatural event (such as Jesus's resurrection) than for an absolutely unique natural event (Cramer, "Miracles," 134–35; cf. Kelly, "Miracle," 55).

316. Weintraub, "Credibility," 368.

317. Elephants are not built to fly, but they could be made to fly whether by human transport in a jumbo jet (assuming an adult elephant, one would have to provide a means of ingress) or by a superhuman entity; in such cases, laws of physics would not be violated. Weintraub, "Credibility," 369, affirms that "the elephant flying is an instance of a kind of event that is very probable: the improbable." But while the improbable does happen, an elephant flying is not merely improbable but physically impossible—without external factors to sustain them, such as transport by intelligent design (e.g., a humanly constructed plane) or a tornado (as tornadoes are known to relocate objects, and a tornado striking a zoo could cause an elephant to "fly," though probably not without killing it).

318. Hambourger, "Belief," 599; cf. Schlesinger, "Miracles," 228. On studying reports of anomalous events together, see also Ellens, "Conclusion," 303.

Are Miracles Possible?

ports in settings most similar to the Gospels and Acts appear fairly frequently and often stem from those that we would otherwise consider reliable eyewitnesses.319

Moreover, whereas mere anomalies are unexpected, it is precisely theistic premises that allow us to anticipate the possibility of some miracles in a theistic context.320

One might also treat these anomalies not as a special class of miracle by themselves, asking first what the evidence is for their occurrence and only afterward a question of divine causation. While the collision of a comet and a planet are rare enough to appear improbable for a given time frame, one cannot rule out that they occurred in the past or might yet occur. Based on knowledge of planets and comets, we might even predict a very likely occurrence for a given finite time frame rather than denying its likelihood based on the usual failure of planets and comets to collide.321 Similarly, the probability that a reliable witness tells the truth about an event that appears anomalous in view of current knowledge can be supported if other anomalies are observed; the additional question of divine causation then strengthens the plausibility of these observations by providing a coherent intellectual framework in which to explain them.

The Theistic Factor Analogies with lotteries are relevant only for epistemic reasons, but the real issue is that a theistic context (if not ruled out) allows for the possibility of miracles, and multiple well-attested miracle claims in that context make them probable. As philosopher Richard Purtill emphasizes, unusual events might even be expected in the right contexts.322 We do not expect athletic world records to be broken regularly, but we might expect them to occur at times at the Olympics.323 Purtill then argues that while Jesus's resurrection makes no sense as a random event, it fits the context of his life and teaching, which it climaxes.324 Similarly, Jesus's earlier miracles would support the resurrection claim, and vice versa, if a reader accepts either.

As noted above, many thinkers appeal to the special religious context of miracles for their significance. Hume's appeal to general experience cannot counter claims

319. Whether or not these are comparable to those behind the reports of miracles in the Gospels and Acts is a matter of debate, but those who argue on other grounds that these narratives reflect carefully transmitted tradition may in fact regard some of the modern reports, especially those passed on orally secondhand, as less reliable rather than more reliable than the ancient analogies with which we compare them.

320. See discussion of the religious context of miracles above.

321. Evans and Manis, Philosophy of Religion, 131.

322. Purtill, "Proofs," 43; cf. Hambourger, "Belief," 601. See discussion of the context of miracles' religious significance, above.

323. Purtill, "Proofs," 43. For a more detailed development of this sort of analogy, see Evans, "Judgment,"

197–98, who specifies degrees of plausibility based on the quantity of relevant data available. Purtill also offers the example that presidents do not regularly grant pardons to ex-presidents, but Ford's pardon of Nixon makes political and historical sense in its specific context (Purtill, "Proofs," 44), as would presumably be the case with any future instances.

324. Purtill, "Proofs," 44; cf. Licona, Resurrection, 146, 162–64. Certainly the claim of Jesus's resurrection is consistent with his theology and mission (cf. discussion in Keener, Historical Jesus, 347).

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

to miracles within a theistic framework, since theists do not deny general experience but argue that the relevant cases for comparison are those involving divine activity.325 In other words, if one presupposes neither theism nor nontheism, one must examine evidence for particular miracle claims inductively to see if a pattern emerges. And if evidence for some miracles makes them probable, the general a priori improbability previously assigned to miracles decreases accordingly.

Again, were Hume to object that rare events were merely improbable but miracles are impossible, he would be back to restating his (ultimately theological) presuppositions without offering evidence.326 If it is the possibility of a miracle-working

God rather than the rareness of miracles to which he really objects, he is offering the wrong argument. That Hume would accept extranormal phenomena not involving religion suggests a serious element of bias;327 as one scholar notes, "Hume's attempt to distinguish the miraculous from the merely extraordinary is scarcely justified on his own principles."328 His argument formally depends on "what always happens" (the point under dispute), not "what necessarily happens," that is, not a priori limitations of what is possible.329 Therefore his conclusion does not follow.

The Circularity of Hume's Approach Houston challenges at length Hume's belief that the general improbability of events in a particular class of event prejudges "the probability of the truth of an actual report of the event."330 As I have been noting, Hume implies that he is arguing inductively. He actually, however, argues deductively based on a conclusion that rests on an inadequate range of data, partly because it has a priori excluded disagreeable evidence. Rather than allowing genuine induction based on evidence,

Hume produced a deductive approach that a priori virtually excluded the evidence

325. Schlesinger, "Miracles," 228 (employing the example of water turning to blood).

326. Beckwith, "History and Miracles," 93–94. This does seem to be Hume's approach in the one passage where he seems to allow for exceptions to known natural law—so long as they are not granted supernatural attribution (see Dietl, "Miracles," 130). Ellin, "Again," 206, argues that for Hume the merely extraordinary does not defy natural law (just the usual course of nature) but miracles contradict laws of nature; this position presupposes that God is not above such laws, as noted above. McKinnon, "Miracle," denies the logical possibility of miracles (see refutation in, e.g., Swinburne, "Violation," 80); Holland,

"Miraculous," allows that something "conceptually impossible" may nonetheless occur.

327. The argument noted in Lawton, Miracles, 56; Taylor, Hume, 11–12. Formally, for the purposes of his argument, his allowance of anomalies while rejecting all miracles is unjustifiable (cf. Taylor, Hume,

10–12), so long as he argues from rareness in experience; in fact, in a theological context, direct divine agency may supply a particularly coherent explanation of highly extraordinary phenomena.

328. The argument noted in Lawton, Miracles, 54; Taylor, Hume, 16–17.

329. See Swinburne, "Introduction," 13. This limitation inheres in Hume's traditional empiricist approach.

330. Houston, Miracles, 133 (developed on 151–68). Against such an argument, see Ward, "Miracles and Testimony," 133 (noting that greater caution is warranted, but not the rejection of careful observation).

Prejudging likelihood by classification also depends on the reliability of the classification and the likelihood one assigns to it. Again, since an event that was ordinary would not be defined as miraculous, ruling out extraordinary events not only rules out much of actual history but also creates a default setting that a priori excludes the probability of miracles, as often noted (e.g., Tonquédec, Miracles, 13).

Are Miracles Possible?

for miracles. He cites experience against experience—typical experience against rare experience, though both are attested by witnesses.331

As is frequently noted today (including above), Hume's argument against miracles is thus circular, assuming what it claims to prove,332 an observation also offered by some of Hume's contemporaries.333 His rejection of some experience on the grounds that it differs from usual experience actually contradicts his own empiricist tradition.334 The more genuinely inductive approach of English scientists of his era was to adjust research models and methods to accommodate new evidence from diverse phenomena, an approach that rendered their position immune to the arguments raised by the deists and Hume.335

Hume prevents his own argument from being falsified by rejecting evidence that contradicts his thesis. As Robert Larmer complains, Hume's denial that any amount of evidence favoring miracles could ever be acceptable "commits him to holding that there are logically possible empirical events which no conceivable amount of positive evidence could ever confirm, but which a finite body of negative evidence disconfirms." Hume at one point allows the relevance of empirical evidence for deciding the question but then contradicts his normal empirical approach by ruling it out of court.336

One may illustrate this predisposition in Hume's own argument. As I have noted, he cites some strong testimony for some miracle reports but then uses the very strength of this testimony to argue that even strong testimonies are useless in favor of miracles, since (he asserts, without argument) these particular miracles may be dismissed!337 An early twentieth-century writer complained, "It is no use

331. On Hume's citing the experience of natural laws against the experience of human testimony, and problems therein, cf. Johnson, Hume, 93; Mozley, Lectures, 98–99. Johnson also raises the question (on 97) why—apart from a prioris—one should accept the testimony of Tacitus or a lab technician yet reject that of historical reports now in the biblical canon. To argue that early Christian writers were biased and Tacitus was not would reflect a serious misunderstanding of the character of ancient historiography (see

Keener, Historical Jesus, 95–125, esp. 117–23).

332. E.g., Lewis, Miracles, 102 (often cited to this effect); Taylor, Hume, 15; Johnson, Hume, 18–19;

Larmer, "Critique," 163–64, 167; Kennedy, "Miracles," 17–18; Evans, Narrative, 153–54; Brown, Philosophy,

72; Purtill, "Defining Miracles," 66; Geisler, "Miracles," 77–78; Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection,"

100 (citing Lewis, and Gregory, "Secular Bias," 137–38); Ruthven, "Miracle," 548. Surprisingly, Millican,

"Theorem," 494, who supports Hume, claims not to mind his tautological reasoning.

333. See Burns, Debate, 219.

334. Jaki, Miracles and Physics, 23 (cited also in Geisler, "Miracles," 78); cf. also Smart, Philosophers,

31–32. Wright, Miracle, 54, describes Hume's immunity to evidence as "stultifying" genuine historical inquiry. Lawton, Miracles, 53, notes that many complain that Hume's demand for conformity with current experience also "militates against the acceptance of new scientific discoveries."

335. Burns, Debate, 15–16.

336. Larmer, Water, 38.

337. Hume, Miracles, 41–48; idem, "Miracles," 38–40. Hume argues against resurrections on the basis that the dead have never returned to life (Hume, Miracles, 31; idem, "Miracles," 33), a basis that simply ignores contrary testimony, even for Jesus's resurrection (Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 105–6).

It is analogous to dismissing the credibility of five witnesses to a murder based on 875 witnesses attesting that they never witnessed the alleged murderer killing anyone over the years (Beckwith, "History and Miracles," 93; cf. idem, "Epistemology," 96). In popular language, Hume compared apples and oranges.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

investigating these events, Hume says in effect, for no matter how conclusive your arguments for their occurrence, they cannot be accepted."338

Various writers have noted the circularity of Hume's denial of these reports of miracles, for example, among Jansenists, which he denied on the mere basis that miracles cannot happen,339 a denial that some today regard as "obscurantist."340 Hume viewed the evidence for Jansenist miracles (often immediate, credible, and multiple testimony) as stronger than that for Jesus's alleged miracles,341 so that denying the former made denial of the latter much simpler. But that at least some cures did occur is difficult to deny. After the pope condemned Jansenism in 1713, the ascetic Jansenist deacon François de Pâris lived even more austerely and died in 1727. At his interment, a widow's paralyzed arm was said to be healed, and many subsequent visitors experienced ecstasy and healing. Cardinal Noailles's report in 1728 acknowledged genuine healings, and reported cures on the site included "cancerous tumors, . . . paralysis, deafness, and blindness." Finally the king had the cemetery closed in 1732, whereupon one graffitist opined, "By order of the king, God is forbidden to perform miracles in this place."342 Officials secured considerable evidence that the most dramatic

338. Wright, Miracle, 52. Dietl, "Miracles," 132, illustrates the extraordinary lengths of absurd improbability to which such extreme naturalistic explanations can resort.

339. See Hume, Miracles, 43–47, citing but rejecting the testimony of abundant witnesses, and noting on 44 that the only (yet sufficient) case against them was the impossibility of miracles. Despite

Jansenists' education, numbers, and reputation, Hume may have rejected their testimony partly because some of the miracles were not public, being among a few witnesses (though cf. comments on witnesses below, acknowledged by Hume), and because they were employed to justify something sectarian (since he rejected whatever could be created to justify a new religion; Slupic, "Interpretation," 525–26).

Slupic, "Interpretation," 535, argues that Hume viewed the history of miracles as people claiming them to justify their own sects (cf. Hume, Miracles, 40–41, 50). In fact, new religions often do not claim miracles, and without examination one cannot assume that a new religion has invented miracles rather than experiences of miracles having called a new religion into being (Taylor, Hume, 16–17).

More than Hume, some outright mocked Jansenist miracle claims, as in the polemic of Rev. Robert

Wallace (1697–1771), "Observations" (1764; for some comment, see Badía Cabrera, "Nota"); far more than Hume (though apparently to his delight; Miracles, 47), some French Catholics of Jesuit leaning attributed Jansenist miracles to demonic manipulation of natural causes (Daston, "Facts," 107), much to the annoyance of Pascal (117); and the bishop and Jansenists traded blame for incurring judgment on society (Deconinck-Brossard, "Acts of God," 362). For one approach to the form and function of the earliest written Jansenist testimonies, see Engels, "Grammaire" (noting the classical structure for miracle accounts and Jansenist theology).

340. Gaskin, Philosophy, 125; see also Wright, Miracle, 51–52, 80; Brown, Miracles, 88; Larmer, Water,

106; Gardner, Healing Miracles, 39–40; cf. Lawton, Miracles, 58; Holder, "Hume," 57; deSilva, "Meaning,"

14–15. Thus Keller, Miracles, 65, criticizes Hume's dismissal of Abbé Pâris's miracles as fraudulent as simply revealing Hume to be a child of his era. (Monden, Signs, 309–21, explains them naturalistically, apparently because they are not orthodox Roman Catholic.)

341. Kreiser, Miracles, 399; see Hume's tongue-in-cheek argument in Hume, Miracles, 44–45. Orthodox

Protestant detractors sought to challenge the parallel but ultimately undermined trust in testimony and criteria for establishing genuine miracles (Kreiser, Miracles, 399).

342. Brown, Miracles, 64; for the graffiti, Kreiser, Miracles, 181. Our knowledge of François himself is limited because of the polemical context in which surviving reports formed (Kreiser, Miracles, 82). Warfield,

Miracles, 119, complains that the claim of a Jansenist who lacked legs, as attested by two surgeons, yet grew them miraculously, is unbelievable.

Are Miracles Possible?

of these particular miracle claims were false;343 their evidence may be correct, or it may reflect the use of political power in a propaganda war. Certainly the claims of the now-marginalized Jansenists were amenable neither to mainstream Catholics nor mainstream Protestants. But Hume fails to note either these detailed challenges to their credibility (differentiating their claims from some other historical miracle claims) or the potential political motivation for the challenges (allowing that the healing claims possibly could be more reliable than their critics conceded).

Hume, like most Catholic and Protestant critics, could dismiss Jansenist reports, but some intellectuals closer to the events felt differently—that is, those who were closer to "direct experience" than Hume was. Consider the influential mathematician

Blaise Pascal, who devised a calculating machine that was the forerunner of modern computers, invented the syringe and the barometer, devised the mathematical theory of probability (hence his famous wager about faith), demonstrated the possibility of vacuums, and so forth.344 Pascal's commitments to Jansenism (and his reasons for penning the Pensées) were reinforced precisely by the healing of his niece, Marguerite

Perrier, in a Jansenist setting, long before the more controversial cures noted above.

A severe, long-term fistula in her eye disappeared during the touch of a consecrated relic on March 24, 1656, at the Jansenist Port-Royal monastery. From all the evidence available, the cure must have been organic and not merely psychosomatic. The repulsive odor from her wound, which had forced her separation from the other girls, and her apparent bone deterioration vanished immediately. Her case provided significant medical evidence and was verified by the diocese. The royal physicians examined

Mlle Perrier, and the Queen Mother herself was persuaded by their positive verdict of a miracle.345 In the next few months, some eighty further miracle claims followed.346

The vast majority of us today would question the relic's authenticity (a thorn from Christ's crown),347 but the dramatic recovery is difficult to deny. Even the Jansenists' critics acceded to the official recognition of the miracle's genuineness, but whereas Jansenists cited it as a sign of divine approval, their detractors treated it as a warning.348 For Hume, however, writing in a period of established Protestant

343. McGrew, "Argument," 656–58, cites the evidence, including retractions from some witnesses and others who claimed that their documents had been tampered with. Detractors attributed less controversial minor cures to imagination or normal restorative processes. McGrew drew my attention to this material in personal correspondence (Nov. 26, 2009).

344. See the summary in Frankenberry, Faith, 84 (more fully on Pascal, including excerpts from his writings, 79–101). See also Pascal, Pensées; idem, Life.

345. Brown, Miracles, 39; Larmer, "Manuscript"; Kreiser, Miracles, 70–71. Mlle Perrier lived on to age eighty-seven, continuing to affirm miracles at the tomb of François de Paris (Brown, Miracles, 39–40).

(For the Catholic tradition of miracles near saints' tombs, see also examples in Duffin, Miracles, 45, 47,

151, 153–55.) Hume, Miracles, 47–48, acknowledges the abundant testimony for the cure of Pascal's niece, then merely dismisses without much argument its value because it is miracle testimony.

346. Kreiser, Miracles, 71.

347. Hume's ridicule rises to an eloquent pitch here (Miracles, 48).

348. Daston, "Facts," 119. Hume himself acknowledged that the Jansenists' enemies could not deny the early miracles, recognizing scores of respectable witnesses (Miracles, 44–47). On some Jansenists' apologetic use of miracles, see, e.g., Kreiser, Miracles, 71–73, 97.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

and Catholic polemic over whose miracles were authentic, all miracle claims were religiously partisan and thus unreliable.349 Though these miracles were recent, public, and attested by many witnesses—that is, they fulfilled Hume's evidential criteria—he dismissed them as irrelevant because they would have entailed what he considered a violation of nature.350 His dismissal, then, rested on his argument challenged above; Jansenist claims were rejected by Hume, Conyers Middleton, and others not because of lack of evidence but simply because they were miracle claims.351

Hume follows the line of argument established by a deist predecessor challenging recent miracle claims surrounding the Huguenots (1705). Deist Thomas

Chubb emphasized the vast number of otherwise reliable witnesses, arguing that they were better attested than nt miracle claims, yet dismissed their credibility by appealing to the authority of consensus: "not one in ten believe it now."352 Other deists advanced the same form of argument, which Hume merely dressed in a special outfit, with Jansenists as the target.353 Hume could scoff at Jansenists with impunity, since they were too Catholic for Protestant tastes (Hume's primary

English readership) yet not acceptable to Catholics either.354

Hume recognized abundant reliable witnesses for such a case and that by all normal means of inquiry, one would conclude that a miracle occurred. Nevertheless, Hume felt justified in dismissing such evidence by appealing to his premise that miracles are impossible.355 It is difficult to comprehend what would qualify as circular reasoning if this approach does not. Hume could logically deny that any evidence for a miracle can be compelling only if he could a priori show that miracles are "logically impossible

(that is, conceptually impossible, like a 'square circle' or a 'married bachelor')"; yet Hume does not do so.356 Some critics further counter that Hume's own approach is epistemologically flawed in that it proves referentially self-defeating.357

349. He deemed miracle reports in religious contexts irrational (a view critiqued in Larmer, Water, 105, who notes that Hume unfairly universalizes). Yet Hume found the accusation of religious deceit ready at hand in Protestant polemic against Catholics (on which see Daston, "Facts," 118).

350. Swinburne, Miracle, 16; Beckwith, Argument, 51.

351. Brown, Miracles, 71. Hume presents against them a doctor's report that such cures were naturally impossible, to which of course those proclaiming a miracle responded that this was the entire point (Ellin,

"Again," 209). Middleton's approach was limited to postbiblical claims and exhibited an anti-Catholic purpose (Fogelin, Defense, 1); though he was apparently less committed to the literal historical veracity of Gen 1–3 than were many of his contemporaries (Frei, Eclipse, 5–6, 120–22, 125, 168, 171), this may have been a genre observation.

352. Burns, Debate, 74.

353. Ibid., 75.

354. On contemporary Protestant audiences rejecting Jansenist testimonies, see ibid., 174.

355. Cf. Larmer, "Manuscript."

356. Beckwith, "History and Miracles," 94; Wright, Miracle, 52; on the coherency of miracles, see, e.g.,

Dietl, "Miracles"; Mumford, "Miracles," 191; Blaauw, "Verdediging" (carefully defining terms); Helm,

"Miraculous," 91 (contrasting "squaring the circle"). Hume excludes any evidence for miracles because they are conceptually impossible—because of his a priori assumption of what is conceptually possible

(Brown, Miracles, 94).

357. A problem also for some of today's cosmologies, on the principle that we have no reason to expect that a product of pure chance (such as the human mind would be assumed to be) should be able to reason

Are Miracles Possible?

Hume's argument is not inductive; rather, it is designed to support his conclusion. When he cites the need for public events attested by many credible eyewitnesses and then dismisses even their testimony, his language is too general to function as a full argument in itself. Rather, he is simply listing ad hoc characteristics that Christian apologists cited in favor of the apostolic witnesses, which he then finds deficient.358 His failure to provide a complete argument at these points invited severe critique from his contemporaries.359

Other Noninductive Elements in Hume's Approach Other factors also indicate that Hume is not arguing inductively. I have noted first that Hume does not argue inductively, but constructs a deductive argument against miracles based on a probability rigged by his nontheistic starting assumptions. A second observation is that Hume's explicit exclusion of beliefs of "ignorant and barbarous nations"360 reflects ethnocentric bias that the vast majority of scholars would reject as unacceptable today. This is a serious problem, but I reserve a more extensive response to it for my discussion in later chapters (most explicitly in ch.

7). Suffice it to note now that he was again adopting a typical deist argument; John

Toland, for example, condemned superstitions that flourished among "ignorant and barbarous" peoples.361 Third, Hume explicitly mentions even some European miracle claims from his own era (i.e., the Jansenists) but then rejects them, because, he contends, miracles cannot happen. I have already commented on the circular character of this reasoning.

Fourth, Hume uses many bogus claims of miracles (already rejected by many Christian critics) to deny the reality of any miracles.362 This guilt-by-association approach, however, reflects the logical fallacy of false analogy, of generalizing based on specific cases without examining other cases that may differ in relevant details.363

Hume thus effectively argues here against a straw man. To proceed genuinely at the abstract level necessary to authenticate epistemologies (cf. Polkinghorne in Frankenberry, Faith,

345; Nash, "Conceptual Systems," 127–30, following Taylor, Metaphysics, 115–19; Plantinga, Warrant, chs.

11–12). Survival of the fittest might explain adaptable intelligence, but does this alone explain reasoning at such a level of abstraction (e.g., theoretical mathematics) when this becomes relevant only in recent millennia (and most commonly in the past few centuries)? Is it another "lucky accident"? (Cf. similar discussion in Polkinghorne, Reality, 41–46, 51–57.) While acknowledging that intellectuals lack unanimity, some believe that design fares better than chance by orders of magnitude as the likeliest explanation for human intellectual capacity (esp. in view of the limited time frame for chance to accomplish such a feat, from the Cambrian explosion and even more narrowly in the span of human development).

358. Burns, Debate, 237; against Hume's generalizations here, see also Breggen, "Miracle Reports," 6; idem, "Seeds."

359. Burns, Debate, 237–38 (citing, e.g., John Leland).

360. Hume, Miracles, 37; idem, "Miracles," 36.

361. Burns, Debate, 75 (noting that Toland was targeting witchcraft, not miracles, but citing Thomas

Chubb with a more general argument). Toland's influence is independently noted in McGrew, "Argument,"

653. On Toland, see further Okello, Case, 103–8.

362. Hume, Miracles, 36–37.

363. See Larmer, Water, 121–22, citing the Pyrrhonistic fallacy (an objection noted already in the eighteenth century; see Burns, Debate, 117, 119); Smart, Philosophers, 43; Beckwith, Argument, 51–52.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

inductively, Hume would have to examine each miracle claim and show it to be false; and he still would not have foreclosed the possibility of some miracle claim.

So long as he proceeds inductively, a single confirmed miracle would disprove his case.364 Indeed, reliable witnesses for sufficiently numerous different miracles, if genuinely independent, support the class of events.365

It is impossible to prove a negative by induction when one has observed a limited range of data, and it is precarious to infer an inflexibly negative rule by induction when abundant eyewitness claims exist that one merely refuses to admit as evidence. Inferring from superstitious supernatural claims that all supernatural claims must be rejected is logically analogous to rejecting any form of theism because we have found earlier forms of polytheism wanting. The latter argument would have been more scandalous in his day, however; his milieu was better prepared to reject direct divine action in nature than to reject theism in general.

Hume's Critics Despite its glaring weaknesses, Hume's approach to miracles became popular and dominated much of the thought of the following era. Nevertheless, from the start Hume had serious critics. Christian apologist William Paley (1743–1805) sought to counter Hume by arguing that reliable testimony should be permitted to challenge what people assumed was natural law.366 Paley's approach on this point is a reasonable one if one's definition of natural law proceeds from inductive observations,367 as Hume's is supposed to.368 Others, for example, E. A. Borger

Some consider transferring associations from one object to another often unethical when used in persuasion

(cf. McLaughlin, Ethics, 146–47); perhaps more precisely, it is poor logic.

364. Smart, Philosophers, 33–34 (detailing the relevant principle of logic); Holder, "Hume," 58; Licona,

"Historicity of Resurrection," 100; Keener, Gift, 90; cf. Lawton, Miracles, 54; others also discuss the idea of any single miracle increasing the probability for miracles in general (e.g., Tucker, "Miracles," 383, on Earman). Some decry the view "that one counter-instance can falsify a law" as "Popper's fallacy" (Mumford,

"Laws," 271, against Popper, Logic, 62–63, and others); since I am treating laws as descriptive, general statements that may be modified by other principles or actors, I am not making this claim generally. Rather,

I am here responding to Hume's less flexible "uniformity of nature," which leaves no room for miracles. He claims that induction rules out miracles; yet by induction a single instance of a miracle would discredit his inflexible argument. (Although the supernatural interpretation might be deemed a matter of probability, in some cases the probability could be very high.)

365. See Holder, "Hume," 54–56 (challenging Schlesinger).

366. Mullin, Miracles, 33. For Paley's argument, see Paley, "Evidences." On Hume's critique of Paley's version of the design argument, see, e.g., Smith, "Introduction," 28.

367. See early critics of Hume (including Paley, 137–38) in Craig, Faith, 134–38; also Brown, Miracles,

89–91, and (on Paley) 144–46; Lawton, Miracles, 62–80 (including Paley, 70–74).

368. By depending only on what has been observed, Hume's view of laws of nature should not rule out what has not been observed (Cramer, "Miracles," 132; on 133 he notes the earlier expectation that swans are white by definition, but notes that some swans are grayish in color). It could reduce its probability if nature were uniform, but we now know that nature behaves differently in different conditions, not all of which are known to us (divine conditions being the specifically relevant differentiating factor postulated for claims of genuine miracles).

Are Miracles Possible?

(1784–1820), also sought to defend supernaturalism.369 I have already mentioned Babbage, Price, and other critics, and further adversaries were legion.370

Much of the intellectual milieu eventually embraced Hume's approach, however: most thinkers elevated laws over testimonies, and once they did so for present miracles they inevitably applied the same objection to biblical testimonies for miracles as well.371 They did so despite critics who pinpointed the problem in their logic. Thus, for example, in 1865 Rev. James B. Mozley (1813–78) pointed out this same problem I and others have continued to note. He complained that natural law tended to be a generalization from many examples, but such a generalization to exclude exceptions was an invalid use of inductive principles.372 Generalization should accommodate all the evidence; thus, this approach to natural law unfairly ruled out exceptional cases, which induction ought to have taken into account.373

Completely sidestepping the point, antisupernaturalist polemicist John Tyndall retorted that scientific induction had brought remarkable progress.374 By contrast, appealing to evidence that Hume would have excluded, many scholars have countered that an inductive examination of evidence from most cultures in history includes abundant testimony to supernatural phenomena.375 Among others, the coauthor with Charles Darwin of the theory of natural selection articulated this objection to antisupernaturalism.376 Scientific induction is useful; it is Hume's epistemological reductionism that is problematic.

While the conclusion of Hume's argument has pervaded the Western worldview today, critics of his argument are stronger today than in the past. As David Johnson noted in a recent monograph on Hume and miracles from Cornell University Press,

369. See Van der Woude, "Discussie."

370. See the survey in Burns, Debate, 176–246; for critics of earlier deist formulations, 96–130.

371. Mullin, Miracles, 33.

372. Ibid., 37; cf. Jaki, Miracles and Physics, 22; on Mozley's arguments more generally, see Brown, Miracles,

159–62. Against extrapolating nature's uniformity with what we know of nature, see Mozley, Lectures,

26–48 (e.g., 26–27, 34–35). In 1925, Tennant, Miracle, 17–18, regarded Mozley's basic contention as on one level "unanswerable" (18), though often ignored, and though he averred its limitations in view of subsequent discussion (cf. further mention in 63, 81, 87, 89). Along with another of Mozley's arguments, this argument "reshaped the miracle debate" of his era (Mullin, Miracles, 40); some scholars have continued to respond to Mozley (e.g., Hay, "Contranatural View," critiquing his lectures). Defending induction in philosophy of science, see Shimony, "Scientific Inference" (concluding on 161 that Hume's "basic lesson remains valid," despite refinements; the nature of our existence that compels our dependence on induction also limits "our ability to justify" it).

373. Cf., e.g., Earman, "Bayes," 298: if Hume says that no amount of evidence can challenge a putative law of nature (which results from induction), his argument is illogical and cannot be supported by any form of Bayesianism.

374. Mullin, Miracles, 40–41. For Tyndall's hostility to religion, see, e.g., Numbers, "Aggressors," 34–35.

375. E.g., Wink, "Write," 6; from a less supernatural perspective, yet acknowledging the pervasiveness of phenomena so interpreted, Theissen and Merz, Guide, 310.

376. Alfred Russel Wallace (Mullin, Miracles, 186). Wallace, increasingly discussed today, was a spiritualist, not a Christian (see, e.g., Herrick, Mythologies, 113–14; Michael Casey, "Forgotten Evolutionist Lives in Darwin's Shadow," accessed at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_fea_malaysia_forgotten_evolutionist,

June 28, 2009), but his position does illustrate that more than two approaches exist.

Hume and the Philosophic Questions

the view that there is in Hume's essay, or in what can be reconstructed from it, any argument or reply or objection that is even superficially good, much less, powerful or devastating, is simply a philosophical myth. The mostly willing hearers who have been swayed by Hume on this matter have been held captive by nothing other than

Hume's great eloquence.377

Johnson argues that Hume's argument is so inconsistent that it appears incoherent unless some unstated assumptions are fleshed out in some way or another; and scholars thus reconstruct the argument in various ways. Johnson's persuasive thesis is that none of these reconstructions provide a coherent argument against miracles.378

The title of John Earman's very different Oxford University Press monograph seems to concur: Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles.379 Yet despite its logical weaknesses, Hume's essay provided the primary argument behind most prejudice against miracles today.

Conclusion According to a common interpretation of Hume's argument against miracles, miracles violate inviolable natural law and hence are impossible. Most scholars today note that if this is Hume's argument, it is a circular argument by fiat of definition and therefore proves nothing. Other questions aside, if a deity genuinely generated the patterns of nature, no logical necessity precludes that deity from acting at will on nature at a more complex level, just as lesser intelligent agents within nature can do. Hume also argued, apparently based on this first argument against miracles, that eyewitness testimony can never be sufficiently persuasive to overcome the uniform experience against miracles. If this argument against testimony is understood as it usually is, it likewise constitutes a circular argument, since whether human experience is uniformly against miracles is precisely the question under debate. Given abundant and sometimes well-attested claims of miracles today, Hume's argument on this point should appear even less persuasive in a twenty-first-century multicultural context than it appeared in his own day

(see chs. 7–12).

377. Johnson, Hume, 4. Or, I might add for the many who have heard of his essay but not read it, by Hume's reputation. Cf. also Earman, Failure, 71.

378. For various reconstructions, see the survey in Johnson, Hume, 22–27 (J. L. Mackie), 28–45

(John Stuart Mill), 46–54 (Antony Flew), 55–67 (Jordan Howard Sobel). For Mackie's argument, see

Mackie, "Miracles and Testimony"; against his conclusions, see, e.g., Reppert, "Miracles"; Ward, "Miracles and Testimony"; Otte, "Treatment." Mill's axiom of uniformity treated causes and results as invariable

(McClenon, Events, 5); against Mill's approach to miracles, see McGrath, "Mill"; earlier, briefly, Tennant,

Miracle, 15–18; Tonquédec, Miracles, 31–34.

379. See also the early Cambridge publication, Taylor, Hume. Taylor repeatedly notes the "confused" state of Hume's argument (e.g., 15) and concludes (54) by wondering, because philosophy must involve more than "surface opinions" irrelevant to one's personal life, "whether Hume was really a great philosopher, or only a 'very clever man.'"

Are Miracles Possible?

Hume's argument proceeds mostly by definition rather than induction, and is logically unworkable even on his own philosophic premises. It succeeded historically largely on the weight of his intellectual prestige and its appeal to some popular trends in his intellectual milieu. As Oxford theologian Keith Ward points out, Hume's arguments regarding miracles "are exceptionally poor and are found acceptable only by those who are (rightly) impressed by his general philosophical acuteness—an acuteness that does not carry over into his remarks on miracles."380

I have omitted in this chapter some points of Hume's argument that I will treat briefly in relevant later chapters. These include especially his specific prejudice against religious testimony, particularly in view of testimony from competing religions (ch. 6) and his prejudice against testimony from "barbarous and ignorant" peoples (ch. 7). We must also turn to broader consequences and problems that arose from the position of Hume and those who shared it.

380. Ward, "Believing," 742. Cf. Johnson, Hume, 4; Earman, Failure, passim.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles Among many academics . . . , the belief that miracles are impossible in principle seems natural, normal, obvious, undeniable—rather like religious beliefs in close-knit, traditional societies. The conviction has an aura of neutrality and objectivity, as if dogmatic metaphysical naturalism were somehow not as much a personal conviction as is dogmatic religion, as if rejection of the very possibility of transcendent reality were the default position, one obvious to any intelligent person. —Brad Gregory, in the 2006 theme issue of History and Theory1

I n the previous chapter, I noted Hume's argument, or at least its frequent application, against miracles: miracles as violations of nature are more incredible than eyewitnesses and their interpretations can be trustworthy, and therefore no evidence can prove persuasive for miracles. I concurred with many that this argument is circular, even granted something like Hume's definition of miracles. I also suggested that Hume's case was more persuasive in a context in which miracles were rarely claimed or accepted among Hume's intellectual peers than it should be today; I shall address reasons for this context in chapter 10. Hume's argument from the supposedly uniform course of nature cannot appear as persuasive in settings in which vast numbers of people have claimed to have witnessed miracles, a point that I will develop in chapters 7–12 and especially chapters 7–9, 12. That 1. Gregory, "Secular Bias," 138; for ideological secularism's function as a religion, see also Hanciles,

Beyond Christendom, 40 (following Minogue, "Religion"); Wolfe, "Potential," 34. (Such critiques involve secularism in its form as an antireligious dogma, not in its popular sense of religious tolerance, which is a positive value with Anabaptist and other religious roots. Part of the problem is divergent uses of the label "secular"; see discussion in Boer, "Introduction," 2–3; very different senses in Plantinga, "Science,"

94–97.) For a comparison of use of even scientific theories as working hypotheses with religious faith, cf. Gingerich, "Scientist," 27; Kuhn, Structure, 158. For some approaches to science fitting sociological definitions of religion, see Wuthnow, "Contradictions," 164.

Are Miracles Possible?

is not to decide in advance what proportion of such claims might reflect authentic supernatural activity, a matter discussed in chapters 13–15.

In this chapter, I survey some continuing developments of the philosophic tradition against miracles to which Hume contributed, as well as to some questions raised by Hume but not treated in the previous chapter.

Consequences and Problems of the Humean Consensus The sort of arguments articulated by Hume eventually became dominant in much of academic philosophy, with far-reaching effects. I shall address some of these effects in this chapter. Among these effects, in time, some forms of theology adjusted to fit the Humean consensus, conceding that God works in the natural order only through means already established in that order. Even more often, historiographic discussion came to a priori exclude the question of supernatural causation.

We must also address in this chapter some relevant Humean arguments not treated in the preceding chapter. Beyond the dominance of Hume's approach typically presupposed in the academy, his objection to miracles based on competing religions could exert an independent appeal today, though on the whole it may carry less weight today than it once did. One implicit concern about granting the possibility of supernatural causation appears to be the compromise of academic religious neutrality, though one need not compromise such neutrality to conduct the investigation. At the same time, modern readers are also less apt to count religions against one another, weakening Hume's appeal. More generally, many of Hume's arguments no longer make the strong sense in our contemporary milieu that they made in the context of English deism and Christian apologetic of his era. Because the larger worldview is shifting, even some traditional academic boundaries prohibiting discussion of supernatural perspectives are being challenged more freely, an observation that will prepare us for following chapters.

Effects in Philosophy Lest we think that skeptical currents of thought such as Hume's had little practical effect, the gap between the Enlightenment elite and more traditionally religious masses affected, among other areas, the treatment of mental illness. Among the poor confined to asylums, "patients who insisted that their torments were spiritual afflictions were liable to have their beliefs numbered among their symptoms."2

Both John Wesley and George Whitefield secured the release of individuals from such asylums whom they believed to be merely religiously devoted; ninety patients admitted in Bedlam between 1772 and 1795 were said to be "insane because of religion and Methodism."3

2. MacDonald, "Healing," 124.

3. Ibid. Early U.S. Methodists were also accused of "driving some persons mad" (Wigger, Saint, 66).

Similarly, German rationalists falsely charged some with insanity caused by Pietism (Ising, Blumhardt, 263)

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

Better-known effects are those on the development of religion and philosophy.

In philosophy, Hegel, with his long-standing influence in German thought, followed by Strauss and other Hegelians, was particularly effective in redirecting the course of modern Western thought. On this subject he articulated an antithesis

"between ancient religion" and nineteenth-century "intellectual sophistication."4

This vantage point solidified into an uncontested consensus until relatively recent times,5 without any adequate impartial, massive empirical investigation into diverse miracle claims.6 Although scientists, like other people, do not live daily life bound exclusively to the dictates of empirical epistemology, modern Enlightenment thought has often identified "scientific" as true and "unscientific" as false.

Modern thought's simultaneous a priori "exclusion of the supernatural from the domain of science" taints supernatural approaches with the suspicion of "falsity and irrationality." Yet such identifications unfairly load the deck epistemologically.7

This radical Enlightenment approach continued into the twentieth century.

Early twentieth-century logical positivists, accepting only a priori truths or empirically verifiable ones, excluded metaphysics, normative ethics, and theology.

That positivism's approach was unverifiable by its own epistemology, however, ultimately weakened the approach's appeal, especially in its strict form.8 One of and used legal force to suppress some teachers of Scripture (91). Even in the early twentieth century, it is said that some charged others with insanity on the grounds of the others' religion (Stewart, Only Believe,

20). The charge already was available in Protestant denunciation of Catholic miracle claims (Daston,

"Facts," 118). Like his Anglican peers, Wesley disliked Hume's essay on miracles (Deconinck-Brossard,

"Acts of God," 374).

4. See Kee, Miracle, 14–16. There are ethnocentric elements of Hegel's construction, consistent with some dominant perspectives of his era. Despite Hegel's dissatisfaction with Prussian corruption, he believed that the Geist had moved history toward its outstanding pinnacle in his own nineteenth-century

German civilization. For his relatively negative assessment of Judaism, see, e.g., Luft, "Unfolding," 56–57.

5. E.g., in contrast to what we saw in ch. 4, Darwin, despite his brilliance, dismissed early Christian miracle claims as the views of incomprehensibly "ignorant and credulous" ancients, like the beliefs of all "barbarians"

(Frankenberry, Faith, 135, quoting from Darwin's autobiography). In his early years he nevertheless publicly presented his natural selection theory as compatible with divine laws in nature (Moore, "Darwin's Faith,"

146–47), a view widely shared (see Livingstone, Defenders). On the historical-critical method, especially regarding its reductionist, antisupernaturalist form, to recent times, see Kee, Miracle, 12–41.

6. Some cross-cultural studies recognize phenomena that various cultures interpret as caused by intelligent suprahuman entities; much of the anthropological literature addressing spirit possession is also sufficiently objective to glean data regardless of one's interpretive grid (cf., e.g., descriptions in Kiev, Magic, passim; Goodman, Demons; Goodman, Henney, and Pressel, Trance; see more fully appendix B). There have also been helpful investigations into particular healing movements (e.g., Harrell, Possible; Hardesty,

Faith Cure), but to my knowledge no one has yet begun collecting the many case studies of healings that could be gathered even from the circles in which I move, except on an anecdotal level.

7. O'Connor, Healing Traditions, 15; cf. also 16 and more generally all of ch. 1 ("Defining and Understanding Health Belief Systems," 1–34).

8. McGrath, Universe, 195; Geivett and Habermas, "Introduction," 14 (noting on 15 the resurgence of explicit Christian thought in philosophy); cf. Clark, Philosophy of Science, 80; K. Clark, Philosophers,

11–12; McInerny, Miracles, 17–18; D'Souza, Christianity, 182–83. Popper, Conjectures, 198–99, argues that empirical theories, like theories in general, can be described as rational only with respect to the problems they are meant to resolve. As noted, many view metaphysical naturalism as similarly epistemologically self-defeating (cf. Nash, "Conceptual Systems," 127–30) as an a priori (cf. Giere, "Naturalism," 214).

Are Miracles Possible?

positivism's common faults has been that, by merely assuming the correctness of accepted scientific paradigms, it renders itself immune to correction9 and thus could actually hinder scientific progress.10 It also neglected the role of subjectivity in the formulation of scientific theories.11 Moreover, as those ignorant of history are destined to repeat it, positivists' deliberate neglect of the history of philosophy led them to repeat many of the previous century's debates as if for the first time.12

The value of positivism is its empiricism, but one can utilize the empirical approach for the sort of data it was designed to address without thereby excluding every other epistemological approach, such as abstract mathematics or even questions about epistemology itself. Traditional scientific empiricism involves knowledge that can be replicated experimentally. But if all knowledge were limited to this approach, there would be little place for historians, journalists, or members of other professions working with different forms of human knowledge.13 Nor can one justify an exclusively experimentalist epistemology by experimental means.14

As historian of philosophy Frederick Copleston notes, "there are other levels of experience and knowledge than that represented by empirical science."15 In fact, multiple epistemologies are needed; as abstract mathematics and empirical inquiry can be employed in a complementary manner, we may need different methods to discover different kinds of knowledge.16 In many cases, complementary explanatory models, each explaining different elements of our data, can work together.17

9. Kuhn, Structure, 98.

10. Barbour, Myths, 36.

11. Barbour, Religion and Science, 11, 93.

12. Colodny, "Introduction," xii–xiii.

13. See, e.g., Gorsuch, "Limits," 284–85, noting that the epistemic method must be tailored to the discipline. Cf. also the observation in Hart, Delusions, 10–11; Licona, Resurrection, 102.

14. Ian Hutchinson, head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, argues eloquently against pure scientism (the approach that accepts only scientific knowledge as meaningful); see

Ecklund, Science, 107–8 (cf. a political scientist's warning against scientists pronouncing on areas outside their expertise, in ibid., 138; biologists on 139–40). Professional overspecialization is largely responsible for the disdain in which a minority of scientists hold nonscientific approaches to knowledge. Some in the humanities have likewise written disparagingly of the hubris of scientific knowledge. Neither side's prejudice against the other is helpful.

15. Copleston, Philosophy, 43–44. Ecklund, Science, 17, notes that some scientists, although a minority, have regarded science as the only reliable guide for all areas of life. (On 18, she offers the example of one scientist who equated the value of human existence with that of cockroaches, dismissing questions of meaning as unimportant.) 16. Cf. Gerhart and Russell, "Mathematics," 122–24; Smart, Philosophers, 30, 40; cf. the limitations of science and even mathematics (with a qualified reading of Kurt Gödel) in Polkinghorne and Beale,

Questions, 26–27, 52; Jaki, Patterns, 200–201 (noting the limits of scientific epistemology and "statistical significance"); Margenau, "Laws," 62; Mott, "Science"; Salam, "Science," 97–98; Townes, "Question," 123;

Granit, "Attitude," 178; Snell, "Science," 211; Szentágothai, "Existence," 215. For multiple epistemological criteria, see Barbour, Religion and Science, 109–10; cf. Peach, "Miracles," 82.

17. Niels Bohr viewed apparently contradictory aspects of electron behavior as complementary

(MacKinnon, "Complementarity," 256, 261–69; cf. Rescher, Studies, 145n2; for the historic philosophic background of Bohr's approach, see Loder and Neidhardt, "Dialectic," 284–88; discussion in Kaiser,

"Complementarity"; for evaluation, see Barbour, Religion and Science, 167–70; but negatively in Bohr's case, cf. Saunders, "Physics," 578); Kant also argued for some complementarity (MacKinnon, "Complementarity,"

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

In contrast to pure empiricism, even much of the structure of mathematics rests on axioms that are presupposed rather than proved;18 they "work" within their closed system, but they do not allow the "pure" deductive logic that some earlier rationalists supposed.

Partly for reasons such as those noted above, many philosophers today readily distance themselves from positivism and positivist epistemology.19 The movement's wane in professional philosophy did not, however, immediately offset its effects in twentieth-century historiography,20 nor did it neutralize all of this approach's common legacy of prejudice against religion.21 First, however, we turn to the impact of philosophic skepticism on religion and theology.

Effects in Religion and Theology The impact of Hume, Kant, and positivists on discomfort with miracles and other transcendent claims remains in some theological circles, although much ground has been taken back by those working in philosophy of religion and philosophical theology.22 The strongest impact on religion, however, was felt in the centuries between skepticism's ascent and its more recent travails.

On a religious level, eighteenth-century English deism was more than ready to accommodate the arguments of Hume and others for antisupernaturalism; nineteenth-century religion directly absorbed such a worldview into a naturalistic

German Protestant liberalism.23 As I have noted, Hume himself was not strictly a deist,24 and some of his arguments undermined deism as well as monotheistic orthodoxies.25 Nevertheless, some of his arguments reflected deist influence,26

259–61); and some complementarity of diverse perspectives seems a necessary approach to our diverse data

(cf. ibid.; cf. the complementarity of some objective and subjective approaches in Ward, "Cross-Cultural

Study," 16). Some appropriation of scientific models in philosophy of religion, however, is not as nuanced as it could be (cf., e.g., the critique of Barbour in Woodsmall, "Analysis," 167–256).

18. Stannard, "Purpose," 43.

19. E.g., Popper, Myth of Framework, 67, 75–76; idem, Conjectures, 21–22, 69–71, 156–57, 253–92 passim; Polanyi, Knowledge, e.g., 9, 11; Copleston, Philosophy, 26–44; cf. Hesse, "Language"; Maxwell,

"Theories," 33; Craffert, "Origins," 337, 342; some who claim its heritage depart substantially from its method (cf. Giberson and Artigas, Oracles, 121–22, on Hawking at an earlier point).

20. Geivett and Habermas, "Introduction," 15.

21. See Marsden, Outrageous Idea, 26–28.

22. See Morris, "Introduction," 3–4.

23. Geivett and Habermas, "Introduction," 11. Nevertheless, many American deists appealed to metaphysical grounds foreign to Hume, and Hume's political views made him controversial in the colonies

(see Fosl, "Hume").

24. Hume disclaimed the title of deist (from a testimonial anecdote about Hume cited in Fosl, "Hume,"

171, 188n23). If meant sincerely, Hume may have allowed an escape for fideists out of respect for his

Calvinist upbringing or Presbyterian friends (Backhaus, "Falsehood," 290–91), but Miracles, 55, may be satire (Gaskin, Philosophy, 125, leaves open both options). While he claims to avoid attacking all religion, little of it is genuinely immune from his assaults (Smith, "Introduction," 19, 51), and he reacted against his

Calvinist upbringing (1–13, 47). Mistrust of religion permanently supplanted the religion of his younger days (76–79, reproducing a final interview with Hume).

25. Fosl, "Hume," 174.

26. See Brown, Miracles, 52–53; Burns, Debate, 141 (cf. 70–95).

Are Miracles Possible?

and his prestige undoubtedly increased the respectability of such arguments in Europe.27 Long before Hume's essay, deist John Toland (1670–1722) had already embraced naturalistic explanations for ot miracles, in contrast to Hermann Samuel

Reimarus (1694–1768), who viewed them as Moses's deception of the people.28

The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), who knew but fell out with Hume, valued Scripture but believed that Jesus's teachings mattered more than his miracles. On his view, the miracles might be explained naturally and simply appeared miraculous to those who did not know better.29

Naturalistic approaches to religion grew quickly. For example, Heinrich Paulus (1761–1851) offered naturalistic explanations for Gospel miracles.30 Thus, for instance, the healings merely benefited the ill persons' nervous systems; the dead were only in "suspended animation"; and the feeding of many people merely involved setting a good example of food sharing.31 Earlier, Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–92) opined that the secret order of Essenes provided medical and psychosomatic cures; he suggested that Jesus and the Essenes merely accommodated superstition to communicate rational truth.32 Karl Heinrich Venturini (1768–1849) similarly postulated that Jesus carried medicaments around to cure people.33 As I have complained elsewhere, "Both Bahrdt and Venturini seem to have conveniently overestimated ancient medical capabilities."34

Ultimately more persuasively, because his view requires fewer gymnastics to explain the text,35 David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74) explained early Christian miracle stories as myths depicted as history.36 Strauss developed the eighteenth27. Similarities existed between Hume's approach and deism (Fosl, "Hume," 174–75; Backhaus,

"Falsehood," 292), but American deists did not draw much on Hume (Fosl, "Hume," 175).

28. Lang, "Toland"; see also Brown, Miracles, 49. On Reimarus, see Schweitzer, Quest, 14–26; Brown,

Miracles, 107–10; Heyer, Jesus Matters, 21–23; Mullin, History, 167. Note also the early eighteenth-century debates addressed in Hillerbrand, "Historicity."

29. Burne, "Rousseau," 143 (on his valuing Scripture), 145–47 (on miracles, esp. 146 on ancients not yet understanding the natural explanation).

30. Sabourin, Miracles, 63; Geivett and Habermas, "Introduction," 11; Schweitzer, Quest, 48–57;

Trench, Miracles, 59–62.

31. Loos, Miracles, 17. Most scholars today recognize the weakness of this approach (e.g., Eve, Healer,

147); Clark, "Miracles and Law," 24, disdains it as so forced as to suggest that its promoters are disingenuous.

32. Schweitzer, Quest, 39–44.

33. Ibid., 44–45.

34. Keener, Historical Jesus, 4.

35. Most exegetes today view the naturalistic explanations as "ridiculous" (Placher, Mark, 78), not to mention their missing the points of the reports (see, e.g., O'Grady, "Miracles," 371), which constitute virtually the only sources we have.

36. Frei, Eclipse, 233–44 (see esp. 236, 239), 275; Brown, Philosophy, 152; idem, Miracles, 117–23;

Loos, Miracles, 19–21; Sabourin, Miracles, 63–64; Kahl, Miracle Stories, 14; Keller, Miracles, 80–91; Geivett and Habermas, "Introduction," 12; Dunn, Remembered, 32–34. For a nearly contemporary critique, see

Trench, Miracles, 62–67; even Schweitzer, Quest, 68–95, opined that Strauss went too far. On Strauss, see further Heyer, Jesus Matters, 24–25; Paget, "Quests," 143; Rössler, "Mensch." Strauss did value the imaginative ideals he thought the miracles symbolized (Zachman, "Meaning," 12–13); he allowed for some naturalistic interpretations rather than myth in his third edition (1838–39, concessions retracted in his fourth, in 1840) but never conceded a supernatural approach (Brown, Miracles, 121–22). On the

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

century emphasis on naturalistic historical explanation, using literary-psychological categories to preserve the value of the text while stripping it of any "unhistorical" supernaturalist elements.37 Because we would expect that the formation of myths of the sort that Strauss envisions would take more than a handful of decades,

Strauss needed to date the Gospels quite late. Thus he went against all concrete internal and external evidence by dating the Gospels to the second century,38 an expedient that most scholars will not follow today.39 While usually forgetting his untenable dating of the sources, Strauss's mythological approach retains heirs today,40 though it is not, I think, dominant in historical Jesus scholarship.41 Correcting it thus remains one significant motivation for this book.42

Interestingly, Strauss did hear of contemporary miracle claims involving Lutheran pastor Johann Christoph Blumhardt (see ch. 10), and a friend of his found himself cured of inability to walk after visiting Blumhardt. Consistent with his worldview, however, Strauss apparently dismissed the friend's cure as psychosomatic.43 Likewise, he regarded Blumhardt as a sincere pastor who was simply limited mentally.44 For his part, Blumhardt, who also had theological training that included exposure to rationalism, did not have a high view of Strauss either.45

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who two centuries after Spinoza popularized antisupernaturalism in theology, used syllogistic reasoning that follows only if one accepts his naturalistic premise from the start.46 (I have noted that Spinoza's views depended on his pantheistic assumptions. Schleiermacher seems to have influence of Strauss on modern academic treatment of miracles, see further Twelftree, Miracle Worker,

32–33. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72) viewed miracle as fantasy or wish fulfillment (Brown, Miracles,

123–24; Keller, Miracles, 94–108; cf. Larson, "Centuries," 96–98).

37. See Frei, Eclipse, 239, 241–42; cf. 274. Strauss did allow for Jesus's cure of "nervous" disorders (so Wilson, "Miracles," 13).

38. Note this complaint in Sabourin, Miracles, 64; Bernard, "Miracle," 392.

39. Thus, as Dunn, Remembered, 672, notes, these stories were recounted as miracles from their first tellings. Those who date the Gospels or some of them to the second century (e.g., Koester; Pervo) remain a respectable but small minority.

40. Sabourin, Miracles, 64, notes that this approach appears most commonly in the form of scholars speaking of the early Christian community generating stories about Jesus's miracles without actually accounting for their origin.

41. See, e.g., critiques in Evans, "Mythology"; Craig, "Tomb" (regarding the resurrection, esp. 67–69), and the work of Burridge, myself, and many others on Gospel genre.

42. With many others, I have argued elsewhere against elaborate legendary accretion in the first-century

Gospels (Keener, Historical Jesus), and I think viewing the Gospel narratives as mythical allegories would have even fewer advocates.

43. Ising, Blumhardt, 222–23 (regarding Eduard Mörike's improved ability to walk).

44. Ibid., 93. Though rarely investigating any claims firsthand, contemporary rationalists mocked

Blumhardt and those who claimed firsthand experience of the healings (263–64).

45. Ising, Blumhardt, 93–94. He opposed the Enlightenment rationalist theology (90–92, 404), including naturalistic explanations of miracles (92).

46. See Dembski, Design, 63, 66. On his approach to miracles, see also discussion in Brown, Miracles,

114–17; Grenz and Olson, Theology, 48; Loos, Miracles, 17–18; Trench, Miracles, 56–59; excerpts in Manschreck, History, 339–40.

Are Miracles Possible?

been heavily influenced by Spinoza.47) Schleiermacher's influential critique simply presupposed the naturalism that he claimed to prove; both arguments thereby beg the question by excluding God or other nonphysical entities as legitimate causative metaphysical options.48 Schleiermacher accepted Jesus's miracles but by claiming that we simply do not understand the dynamics of matter and spirit;49 what made events miraculous was the subjective wonder they evoked,50 and he warned believers not to expect God to intervene today.51

By the late nineteenth century, skepticism regarding supernatural intervention had become dominant even in much of theological academia.52 Despite Adolf

Harnack's interest in much historical information in the nt, for example, he regarded miracles, angels, apocalyptic prophecies, and the like as nonhistorical, alien intrusions on the nt message.53 He doubted nature miracles and the like, while allowing that Jesus's powerful personality may have effected some recoveries.54 Yet it was metaphysical presuppositions, not empirical evidence, that drove scientism in a naturalistic direction,55 and it was the "assured results of modern science" that shaped the rout in theology.

In more recent scholarship, Bultmann and his ilk simply restated uncritically such dominant philosophic assumptions.56 In the wake of such arguments, some

47. Schleiermacher's basis appears to be "his assimilation of Spinoza" (Dembski, "Critique," 443), and Dembski regards it as "an exercise in question begging" (463).

48. Idem, Design, 63, 66. For the philosophic history of theological antisupernaturalism, see Hamilton,

Revolt (for various metaphysical approaches, see 67–124; for Schleiermacher and his allies specifically,

67–90; Hamilton himself prefers more of Bonhoeffer's approach, 169–80); on Schleiermacher's rejection of the need for miracles, see Frei, Eclipse, 313, 316; Richardson, Age of Science, 81; Zachman, "Meaning,"

10–12. Even Victorian Christians often struggled with reconciling prayer with their assumption of the uniformity of natural law (Opp, Lord for Body, 17).

49. See Larson, "Centuries," 94–96.

50. Clark, "Miracles and Law," 26 (on Schleiermacher and Ritschl).

51. Edwards, Christianity, 418.

52. For the late nineteenth-century triumph of skepticism toward supernatural intervention in nt scholarship, despite the valiant efforts of the earlier "Cambridge triumvirate" of J. B. Lightfoot, B. F.

Westcott, and F. J. A. Hort, most effectively through the conversion from supernaturalism of their apparent successor William Sanday, see Mullin, Miracles, 138–78 (on Sanday, 163–65; cf. a nuanced position in Sanday, "Miracles"). On the gradual neo-orthodox reconsideration (esp. in the 1920s to the 1950s), see

Mullin, Miracles, 254–59. Yet already by the late eighteenth century, most German pastors no longer offered theological explanations for or accounts of miraculous escapes in current natural disasters (Lehmann,

"Miracles," 334); for changing approaches to "acts of God" in England and France, see Deconinck-Brossard,

"Acts of God."

53. Grenz and Olson, Theology, 60. For Harnack's approach to the historical Jesus, see, e.g., Keener,

Historical Jesus, 5–6 and sources there; for earlier "liberal lives" of Jesus, besides the survey in Schweitzer, see Heyer, Jesus Matters, 25–32; Theissen and Merz, Guide, 5; Paget, "Quests," 143–45.

54. Loos, Miracles, 28, noting that Harnack also left some cases unexplained.

55. See Dembski, Design, 82–85.

56. See Jaki, Miracles and Physics, 13–14; McGinley, Form-Criticism, 71; O'Connell, "Miracles," 55; deSilva, "Meaning," 7–10 (critiquing esp. H. Braun on 10–12); Anderson, Quest, 178; Smith, Thinking,

94. Other theists have also critiqued Bultmann on miracles (e.g., Geisler, Miracles, 67–74; Torrance, Space,

37–38, 48ff., as cited in Yung, Quest, 7; McGowan, Authenticity, 70); against Bultmann and others regarding other spiritual forces besides God, see also arguments in Twelftree, Triumphant, 135–70.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

scholars have downplayed biblical miracles even for theological reasons.57 By contrast, some recent scholars have observed the incompatibility of Bultmann's assumptions about miracles with his theistic assumptions.58 More generally, Wink observes that many scholars speak only of God working through human agents.59

"So acclimated are we to this attitude of functional, methodological atheism," he complains, "that we may no longer be shocked by the vast gulf between this view and the Bible's, where God is depicted as directly intervening in nature and history at will!"60 The necessary philosophic foundations for antisupernaturalism are not theistic but atheistic or deistic (see ch. 5). Yet as we have been observing, this practice of merely presupposing the inadmissibility of supernatural explanations has a long pedigree.

A Sound Approach?

The frequent reduction of what is real to what is material, thereby excluding explanations like God,61 in the name of science is not the fruit of empirical science per se but a philosophic construct.62 Much of this argument comes down to simple assertions based on plausibility structures dominant in the era in which 57. E.g., Hobbs, "Miracle Story," 126, thinks that the genuine Gospel paradigm resembles "Jesus's final

'failure' to achieve a miracle, to escape the Cross." This peculiarly Western reading somehow neglects the resurrection narratives.

58. Ward, "Believing," 742; cf. Culpepper, "Problem of Miracles," 213; deSilva, "Meaning," 10 (noting that Bultmann's approach suppresses the genuine "otherness" of the nt). Ward, "Believing," 743, notes that even Immanuel Kant did not restrict intelligent action to laws so inflexibly. Kant may have even allowed for something like divine design in creation (see Nuyen, "Kant on Miracles," 320–21); indeed, even some statements of Hume elsewhere tend in that direction (see Backhaus, "Falsehood," 293). Some theological writers have regarded the basic problem as not scientific arguments but simple human unbelief (Spurr,

"Miracles," 333–34).

59. I.e., as if this was the only way that a god could be expected to work.

60. Wink, Transformation, 31.

61. The real issue in theism is not, however, materialism outside the question of God (the only question I am addressing here). Though dualist approaches remain common (cf., e.g., Garcia, "Minds";

Beauregard and O'Leary, Brain), theists can offer monistic anthropological approaches (see Richardson,

"Agency," 357; Peacocke, Creation, 133; Green, Life; Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 9, 59–60, 75–76,

117–37; Polkinghorne, Reality, 46–49; for a survey of some approaches, see Johnson, "Neurotheology,"

218–22); note also the mostly mediating approach of emergence (see Davies, "Preface," x–xi, xiii; Clayton,

"Foundations," 27; idem, "Appraisal," 312, 315; Ellis, "Nature," 97–98; Deacon, "Emergence," 149;

Silberstein, "Defense"; Murphy, "Causation"; Peacocke, "Emergence"; note also Van Gulick, "Charge").

Those who embrace anthropological monism on this level of reality, or whose conception of reality seeks to explain material and spiritual elements in a cohesive whole, need not exclude aspectival distinctions on a functional level, such as appear in the nt. Some writers appeal to consciousness as divinely created (e.g.,

Mott, "Science," 66; Eccles, "Design," 164; Garnham, "Stage"); others emphasize more fully its connection to the brain (Snell, "Science," 210, while considering himself a dualist on this issue).

62. See Houston, Miracles, 123; Williams, Miraculous, 204; cf. Marsden, Outrageous Idea, 75–77.

Macklin (an anthropology professor), "Yankee," 74, therefore contends that scientism thus functions as religion rather than as science (cf. similarly Barrington-Ward, "Spirit Possession," 464, and others). Still revolting against an earlier era's religiously framed dogmatism, many scholars a priori exclude intelligent personal causation from empirical consideration and do so with the dogmatism of which they have become unwitting heirs.

Are Miracles Possible?

they originated.63 Influential philosopher William James complained that "orthodoxy is almost as much a matter of authority in science as it is in the Church."64

The legitimacy of metaphysical options is a philosophic and metaphysical, not a strictly scientific, question; metaphysical naturalism is a metaphysical theory, not a necessary reading of scientific data.65 (It was at least partly a reaction against Aristotelian teleology.66) That is, if a scientist or anyone else dismisses the possibility of supernatural reality, she is offering a metaphysical view and pontificating on metaphysics no less than someone who simply assumes the contrary. Moreover, as I observed in chapter 5, these assumptions depended on a scientific worldview quite different from ours today, and were offered not by scientists themselves but by philosophers (especially deists and Hume) with a religious agenda.

God Acting in the Natural World?

There is no unanimity even among theists themselves regarding the nature of God's activity in the universe.67 Usage defines terms' socially agreed meaning, but even the loosest use of the term "miracle" normally designates something distinct from God's ordinary activity in the universe.68 (Some thinkers restrict the term further to acts that reveal God's character, resembling what biblical texts often mean by "signs."69) Some theists have concluded that God works through the natural

63. See Williams, Miraculous, 34.

64. Noted in Macklin, "Yankee," 74.

65. Osmond, "Physiologist," 158. He notes that there is no scientific reason per se for excluding final causality (159). See further Okello, Case, 10–13, following Alston and Plantinga.

66. Osmond, "Physiologist," 155, observes that seventeenth-century mechanistic philosophy, emphasizing efficient causes, reacted against Aristotelian teleology. For the analogy of humans (as a formal, intelligent cause) forming tools by "shaping forces (efficient causes)" acting on "raw materials (material causes)" for a specific outcome (final cause), see, e.g., Wilcox, "Blind," 169, who notes that belief in purpose/final cause does not exclude the scientific pursuit of efficient causes. For the history of approaches to causation, see briefly Wilcox, "Blind," 170–71; for the value of medieval approaches concerning causality for modern discussions of science and theology, see Ramachandra, Myths, 175; for various levels of causation and theology, see Spitzer, Proofs, 210–15, 220–25; for various forms of causality in Aristotle, see, e.g., Deacon, "Emergence," 113; for these forms applied to the question of miracles, cf.

Tonquédec, Miracles, 40–45.

67. For one survey of approaches, see Peacocke, Theology, 135–83; for a philosophic response to Tillich's denial of miracles possibly violating natural law (Tillich, "Revelation"), see Swinburne, "Introduction,"

15; for other challenges to Tillich's approach, see Putnam, "Tillich"; for Tillich's historical baggage, see

Brown, Miracles, 172. Hay, "Concept," 195, notes that miracle is meaningless in the approach of Tillich and Bultmann, in which God is simply active in everything; but he contends (from a process perspective) that while God is active in everything, "the content of that activity varies from situation to situation," leaving miracle significant. Keller, "Power," 122, argues that in process theology God can influence natural factors, supernatural differing from natural more in degree than in kind; Epperly, "Miracles," 61, even allows that from a process approach one "can pray for healing" and "expect miracles," though they will not always happen (cf. also idem, Touch, 16–22, 43–46, 109–11). By contrast, Langford, "Problem," 52, contends that God's mind affects humans, but only in an "inter-psychosomatic" way. I am not promoting a process approach or any other here; I am not a philosophic theologian, and am here simply surveying various approaches that can sometimes accommodate miracles.

68. Evans, Narrative, 137, 141.

69. Ibid., 141. Cf. discussion of miracles' religious context in ch. 5.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

order, but only through that order, not in ways for which no naturalistic explanation is possible.70 They thus think that miracles outside the norm of nature's regularity that God established would be unlikely, inconsistent with God's normal working.71

This conclusion is not a necessary corollary of the evidence, however. Granted, a biblical theist would see God typically working through the created order. In biblical narratives, God might do extraordinary acts through a powerful wind

(Exod 10:13; 14:21; Num 11:31); some have offered plausible arguments that even the plagues in Egypt intensified the local ecosystem in an extraordinary way.72 Similarly, Moses is rescued by extraordinary yet human means as an infant, though many babies perished (Exod 2:1–10); because Paul was a Roman citizen, he survived a situation in which Stephen was martyred (Acts 6:13–14; 7:57–58;

21:28; 25:3, 10–12). Many Christians have traditionally described such rescues as providence. My point is that Scripture is more interested in divine acts than in whether particular instances violate nature; yet even many Christians have unwittingly accepted definitions of miracles as violations of nature ultimately from Humean philosophy. Yet God working through nature does not explain either all our biblical evidence or all our empirical evidence today, unless we define "working through the created order" at a level higher than what we normally mean by it. This is a possible way of describing miracles, but is simply a matter of changing the definition, not of excluding the phenomena.73

As Polkinghorne and others have responded, why should God choose to be limited to one way of working?74 Granted that God would be free to work through 70. Peacocke, Theology, 183. Peacocke argues for God's working in a top-down way similar to information input (in "Emergence," 261–66, he envisions top-down causation as the whole contextually influencing the parts). The demand for radical consistency might in that respect resemble the wholly other, passionless deity of Platonic theology, but this approach emphasizes immanence and God's character much more than Platonism could have allowed. He argues for "hierarchies of complexity" (Peacocke,

"Emergence," 257–61). Some might embrace some insights of this approach without accepting panentheism more generally (on panentheism, see, e.g., discussion and critique in Grenz and Olson, Theology, 38,

39, 126, 142, 181–82; summary in Davies, Mind, 43). Some theologians have long used panentheism to try to reconcile theism with current scientific models (e.g., Pittenger, "Miracles 1," 106). Against the assumption that God's action is "confined by the limits of probability" and variation within the natural sphere, see Ward, "Believing," 747.

71. Peacocke, Theology, 208, 211; for the resurrection, 284 (Peacocke is not dogmatic here, but requires an extraordinarily high standard of evidence).

72. See, e.g., Hort, "Plagues" (the classic statement of the case, challenged appropriately in Sarna,

Exodus, 70–73); Duncan Hoyte, "Plagues" (Duncan Hoyte is a parasitologist); Fretheim, "Plagues"

(resembling natural plagues but transformed to a cosmic level); Stieglitz, "Records" (in their ancient setting, esp. from Amarna, Mesopotamian, and Ugaritic texts). The idea was prominent as early as 1911

(Flinders Petrie, cited in Perry, "Believing," 341; idem, "Miracles," 67), and divine intensification of Egypt's ecosystem appears earlier in Trench, Miracles, 10 (following Hengstenberg). For Egyptian elements in the plagues, see Zevit, "Ways"; for heavy Egyptian influence in Exod 1–15, see Niccacci, "Faraone." Others point out that the Egyptians could not construe the first and last plagues naturalistically (Currid, Egypt,

106–7) and rightly emphasize that the theological issue seems paramount (ibid., 108–17 and sources cited there; see Exod 12:12; Num 33:4).

73. Cf. Evans, Narrative, 157.

74. With, e.g., Polkinghorne, Quarks, 100.

Are Miracles Possible?

the apparent randomness of nature (and human lives) to achieve long-range purposes,75 is there any reason why God could not sometimes work differently, to communicate something special by making it distinct from the broader general revelation? Such a supposition requires no inconsistency in God's character, only multiple means of achieving divine ends, just as humans can perform physical work either directly or through verbal communication that elicits a physical response.76 If a theist allows that God could initiate time and space (according to the currently dominant cosmological model, through the big bang), how is it logical consistency to insist that a consistent God must work only through the normal character of time and space? Whatever terms we use to define the case,

God working through nature does not itself logically exclude the possibility of extraordinary and atypical acts of God as signs; it instead reveals far more than sufficient power requisite to accomplish miracles such as are claimed in the Gospels and Acts.77

Because it focuses on repeatable natural events, physical science does not predict all specific actions of intelligent agents. Some philosophers of science have pointed out that "the action of agency (whether divine or human) need not violate the laws of nature; in most cases it merely changes the initial and boundary conditions on which the laws of nature operate."78 Miracles are not meant to be understood as 75. On the idea of God's interplay with chance, which God wrote into creation, see Peacocke, Creation,

105; Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 56, 142–43; Inwagen, "Chance"; Bartholomew, Chance; for a process approach to miracles (God working in rather than from outside nature), see Hay, "Concept" (e.g., arguing on 188 that it seeks to meet the scientific worldview). Evans, Narrative, 138, notes that theists do not necessarily see God as directly causing each event (cf. also Young, "Impossibility," 33–34, arguing for God as one and the determinative causal factor in some events); for the nature of randomness at the quantum level, see Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 42. The dichotomy between randomness and intelligent causation has been a long-standing one, though some today have moved beyond it; ancient

Stoics affirmed intelligent design whereas Epicureans affirmed randomness (Wilcox, "Blind," 170). For design arguments in antiquity, see, e.g., Cicero Nat. d. 2.54.133–2.61.153; Epictetus Diatr. 1.6.3–10, 23–24;

1.16.8; Dio Chrysostom Or. 12.28–29, 34, 36–37; Plutarch Isis 76, Mor. 382A; Maximus of Tyre 27.8.

76. All analogies with humans or anything else natural are limited, but we lack anything nonnatural with which to compare God's activity (cf. Isa 1:3; 46:5; John 3:12; Rom 6:19), unless (some would argue) it is our conceptions of what is possible (which would also be sufficient to make the case).

77. Of a different character might be resurrection as eschatological transformation, but this would seem analogous to the creation event. If one accepts the oft-argued anthropic principle, God working through nature could also be used to argue for sufficient benevolence and interest in humanity to support some special acts like miracles.

78. Meyer, "Scientific Status," 167 (quotation); Colwell, "Defining Away" (among sources Meyer notes);

Young, "Petitioning," 196; Jaki, Miracles and Physics, 59; Nichols, "Miracles," 704; Larmer, "Laws," 231; cf.

Brümmer, Pray, 69–87. Recognizing the reality of natural causes thus in no wise excludes the possibility of extranatural ones (Alston, "Action," 53). Although postmodern emphasis on social forces poses the problem of human agency in a new way (Shaw, "Agency," 1–3), it does not obliterate it as a factor (Shaw,

"Agency," 7–9), and in any case human agents need not be autonomous for an analogy with divine agency, since no analogy is precise. God's greater autonomy ought if anything to grant God greater freedom of agency (pace notions of transcendence that assume isolated cosmic domains without interaction). One need not, however, assume that God's freedom requires "freedom" to violate his own moral character; see discussion in Moreland, "Agency," 155–56. That claim would blend different concepts under the same label and involves a logical impossibility rather than freedom as an agent.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

expressions of law, but instead belong to the sphere of "contingent events."79 We could reason from nature's uniformity only if we knew all the causal conditions present and could exclude intelligent (and in this case extranatural) causes. Probability estimates for rolls of dice will be skewed if the dice are loaded, and if one allows for the possibility of distinctive divine action in some circumstances, one cannot rule out miracles in those circumstances.80

That is, not just unintelligent entities or processes but human or divine agents can also function as causes.81 We do not speak of human actions as violating nature simply because the laws of physics do not predict them.82 Physics and biology certainly constrain our options, but human actions depend on and function at a higher level of complexity than the basic patterns in physics and chemistry. On the premise of theism, a God not dependent on the universe would be even less constrained in that God's action than humans are. Just as helicopters constructed through human intelligence do not contradict the normal principle of gravity, neither is the specific activity of a divine intelligence incompatible with normal principles of nature.83 Everyone understands that nature's laws describe normal existence84 but that other factors, particularly intelligent actors, can affect the factors they describe and thus "interfere" (if one chooses to use that language) with the "laws."85

79. Tonquédec, Miracles, 11. Distinctions between necessity and contingency figured in ancient

Greek philosophy, and are helpful here.

80. Cf. Levine, Problem, 35 (noting that Hume would still opt for uniformity of nature and the impossibility of knowing that miracles have occurred, 35–36).

81. Cf. also Blomberg, Gospels, 106; Moreland, "Miracles," 142; for the analogy between human and divine intelligent causation (allowing for the analogy's limitations), see also Gwynne, Action, 184–87;

Hesse, "Miracles," 41–42; Peacocke, "Incarnation," 332; Alston, "Divine Action" (e.g., 258, 280, advocating partial univocity, hence partly literal and partly figurative analogy); cf. already Mozley, Lectures, 130; Sanday,

"Miracles," 65; Keene, "Possibility of Miracles," 212; Ferm, "Miracles," 217; defended against objections in Forsman, "Double Agency," 125–26 and passim. On the philosophic question of divine agency, see the discussions in Polkinghorne, "Chaos Theory"; Hebblethwaite and Henderson, Divine Action; Ellis, "Action";

Young, "Epistemology," 122; Kellenberger, "Miracles"; against divine agency, see Chryssides, "Miracles" (but note the reply in Berhenn, "Miracles"). Many allow also both divine and human causation simultaneously, though others demur (see one summary of "double causation" perspectives in Thomas, "Thought," 46–50).

Some define miracles in terms of divine activity on the analogy of human minds (Langford, "Problem," 52); others demur (Wei, "Meaning," pinpointing problems in Langford's approach). Hume rejected an analogy between human and divine causation, accepting only predictions based on the natural order (noted in Langtry, "Probability," 72); but if humans are the most intelligent personal entities we know, they ought to provide our closest available analogy to deity. In a posthumously published work, even Hume might allow a distant analogy between human intellect and order in the cosmos; see Backhaus, "Falsehood," 294, though viewing the allowance as fideist. Transcendence can be postulated against any sort of divine agency only on particular theological understandings (e.g., by ruling out immanence and analogical language).

82. Ward, "Miracles and Testimony," 137. The actions of personal beings cannot be readily formulated in terms of physical laws (cf. Ward, "Believing," 746–47, regarding God as a nonphysical being).

83. A common analogy, although some (e.g., Clark, "Miracles and Law," 24) find the illustration inadequate.

84. That is, they are descriptive and nomological rather than ontological, but are sufficient to offer predictions under the ordinary circumstances they depict (Dietl, "Miracles," 133). See discussion in ch. 5.

85. Davis, "Actions," 175–76 (closely following Alston, "Action," 56); Evans, Narrative, 145–46 (also following Alston); the gravitation argument (without helicopters) is an old one (e.g., Trench, Miracles, 13).

Are Miracles Possible?

(In fact, they do not suspend the laws but merely introduce higher order activity in particular cases.) Over the past century, physics has become more "hospitable" to accommodating human agency, and this understanding likewise makes divine agency more plausible.86

Although our experience with human intelligent actors makes them miniscule in size compared with the universe, they are not miniscule in complexity. According to calculations in the fairly fresh discipline of bioinformatics, the information content in the DNA of even a bacterium is many times that of the entire universe a billion years ago, which consisted mainly of hydrogen and helium atoms. (By one recent, minimal estimate, the comparison is something like 1010,000 to 1080.) The complexity necessary to allow human beings, and thus intelligent human action, is far beyond both.87 Intelligent actors may not "disrupt" the "regularity" of nature, but their existence operates on a level of complexity quite different from most of the vaster cosmos of which they are a part. How much more should this be true of a putative divine actor not subject to a cosmos that this actor originated? Those who, with Scripture and/or creed ("maker of heaven and earth"), affirm a Creator would hardly be impressed with any demand that this God be subject to patterns of nature that this God initiated.

Scientific language is adequate (and designed) for depicting natural phenomena, but we employ a different order of language to describe human relationships.88

One might be forced in some circumstances to use both, say, the case of a doctor treating his or her spouse to whom the doctor is personally attached.89 Naturalistic description can recount a person's recovery; explaining that recovery in terms of God, however, invokes second-order language involving personal relationship.90

Human experience necessitates metaphysical as well as scientific language; the languages describe different aspects of existence and are not intrinsically contradictory.91 Human history, therefore, is not subject to pure scientific description.92

"The so-called conflict between science and miracles," Ian Ramsey observes, "is Hume himself allowed human action within nature but treated divine action differently if God was viewed as immaterial (Smith, "Introduction," 48), an approach that remains a restatement of presuppositions.

Electromagnetism overpowers gravitation; how can we suppose that a Creator could not? We can do so only if we a priori rule out the possibility of a Creator active in the world—again, by presupposing (among the dominant Western options) atheism or deism.

86. See Polkinghorne, "Chaos Theory," 250–51 (though cautious about formulating the analogy).

For the analogy of divine information input into the universe and human creative "shaping-information," see Puddefoot, "Information Theory," 312. On another level, of course, human agency usurped the notion of divine agency in the wake of the Enlightenment (Bowald, Rendering, 13–19).

87. Cf., e.g., information in Davies, "Downward Causation," 47; Ellis, "Nature," 97–98; more detailed studies in bioinformatics.

88. Ramsey, "Miracles," 24.

89. Ibid., 23.

90. Ibid., 24–25. Physics may describe providence and the natural side of existence; miracles and the personal side of existence, however, involve metaphysical concepts (25–26).

91. Ibid., 21.

92. See ibid., 10.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

a pseudo-conflict which only arises when complete adequacy is claimed for the language of science."93

God Acting in History?

Hume's reasoning influenced not only the practice of science but also that of historiography.94 Philosopher F. H. Bradley took his approach as essential to critical historiography; Ernst Troeltsch labeled this argument the principle of analogy, a principle by which events not known to happen today should not be accepted as happening in the past.95 In its dogmatic form, this approach has been subjected to considerable challenge, as I suggested in the previous chapter.96 Some of Troeltsch's followers have continued to employ his basic argument, however.

These notably include Van Harvey in historical Jesus research several decades ago,97 though Harvey's version of impossibility is not metaphysical but rather the alleged impossibility of modern thinkers believing in miracles.98 Nevertheless, this principle of analogy makes first-century miracle reports more rather than less plausible today, as many scholars now argue. I will return to this point later, and seek to elaborate it more fully in subsequent chapters.

Historian Ronald J. Sider99 warns that "the morality of" modern historiography demands that historians, regardless of personal convictions, "must remain methodologically neutral" or agnostic. Neutrality regarding God's existence means that historians in this public role must allow miracles as a real possibility rather than ruling it out a priori.100 Historians must be cautious about reports of unusual or supernatural events; they are not, however, obligated, as historians, to rule them

93. Ibid., 26.

94. See, e.g., Force, "Breakdown," 157.

95. McGrew, "Miracles" (3.3). For a survey of Troeltsch's approach to the historical-critical method, see Keller, Miracles, 198–212.

96. See, e.g. (esp. against Troeltsch), Craig, Faith, 153; Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 98–99; idem, Resurrection, 140–42; Licona and Van der Watt, "Historians and Miracles," 3–4; Beckwith,

"History and Miracles," 96–97; Kelly, "Miracle," 52–57, esp. 54–56; Okello, Case, 15–19. For a critique of Troeltsch's a priori approach, see Evans, "Judgment," 200–201; Brown, Miracles, 128–30. Because

Troeltsch affirmed the culturally conditioned character of historical claims, placing Troeltsch's own methods in their historical setting should free us from obligation to simply perpetuate them uncritically

(Kelly, "Miracle," 55).

97. For critiques of Harvey, Historian, see Sider, "Methodology"; Evans, "Judgment," 186–201;

Okello, Case, 15–19. Sider, "Methodology," 24, critiques Harvey's approach as ruling out past events differing from one's experience; this may compare with Hume's approach militating against scientific discovery.

98. Sider, "Methodology," 25–26; idem, "Historian," 311. My following chapters will challenge that premise in considerable detail, including the tight restriction of modernity to a minority of the world's population, but it may have seemed more plausible in Harvey's earlier Western academic context. Some have sought to find modern analogies in whatever divine works draw attention to God's power (Steinmetz,

"Wunder," rejecting the biblical defensibility of cessationism); the exclusion of some kinds of "wonders," however, could weaken an analogy argument for miracles.

99. Known today more for his social activism, Sider was trained first as a historian at Yale.

100. Sider, "Methodology," 28. For one philosophic treatment advocating that historians decide on a case-by-case basis, see Basinger and Basinger, Miracle, 31–51 (esp. 51).

Are Miracles Possible?

out.101 If neutrality is less in vogue for writers in the humanities today, tolerance is not; if advocacy against theism is acceptable, then advocacy for theism should be acceptable as well.

Some scholars today define history in such a manner as to exclude the possibility of genuine miracles in history.102 Especially as applied on a popular level, however, this definition risks confusing two meanings of history, namely, a self-limited methodology that as history cannot pronounce judgment concerning claims of supernatural causation,103 and history as events that actually happened.104 Such a confusion further risks (and sometimes produces) the assumption that history as a discipline rejects the possibility of miracles. History as history might not pass judgment on whether or not an occurrence (such as the resurrection) was a miracle

(a theological judgment involving philosophic questions about God's existence and activity), but it can seek to address whether or not an event literally happened.105

If an event happened and some evidence for that event remains, it can be subject to historical investigation.106

By contrast, to a priori deny that such events happen is to prejudge the conclusion before doing objective investigation—and that judgment involves a philosophic issue, not a historical one. Such explanations were originally ruled out of court in some historiography, as in science, for philosophic reasons, yet the original reasoning for that exclusion no longer dominates the philosophy of religion on 101. Sider, "Methodology," 28–29. Cf. the discussion of presuppositions and miracles with respect to historiography in Légasse, "L'Historien," 140–43.

102. E.g., Ehrman, Prophet, 193; idem, Historical Introduction, 241–44; idem, Brief Introduction, 172;

Price, Son of Man, 19–20, 131 (appealing, he claims, not to metaphysical presuppositions but to the argument from analogy).

103. Ehrman, Prophet, 196–97, notes that many historians as people of faith believe that miracles did happen but at these times speak "not in the capacity of the historian, but in the capacity of the believer" (see also idem, Historical Introduction, 244). On history's limits, see, e.g., Wright, Miracle, 81–82. Nevertheless, one wonders if the methodology is neutral if historians as historians must be committed to atheistic/deistic presuppositions even if evidence suggests stronger alternative explanations. Historians can, of course, bracket out questions of causation without ruling out the possibility of causation.

104. For the relevance of definitions of history, see the discussion in Wright, Resurrection, 12–13. Some who do not actually rule out the possibility of divine intervention exclude such events from history by using a definition of history that excludes the supernatural (e.g., Meier, "Reflections," 106). While such a difference is a matter of definition, hence ultimately semantic (some allow for supernatural events in history but assign their interpretation solely to theology—e.g., Padgett, "Advice," 303), it risks reinforcing a traditional Enlightenment philosophy of history that is open to challenge, since some have used the narrow definition as license for excluding an event not only from their methodological purview but also, by simple definition rather than argument, from possibility as a genuine event.

105. See Habermas, Evidence, 25; Sider, "Methodology," 30, 33; Beckwith, "History and Miracles,"

88. This would answer the argument of Ehrman, Prophet, 193, that history involves only "events that are accessible to observers of every kind." Still, Ehrman is right in his point that because miracles are irregular events, we do not simply take miracle reports at face value without some evidence; the debate involves the level of evidence necessary to provide probability in a given case or whether the standard is too high to admit any evidence.

106. Habermas, Evidence, 25. Explanations or lack of explanations for events do not affect whether an event can "be accurately narrated"; one can narrate someone being cured after Jesus touched him or her regardless of the explanation (Colwell, "Miracles and History," 13).

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

which such assumptions in other disciplines were based. The standard epistemic method of science (demanding replicability) does not work in history; the best that one could do is to exclude a class of events that lack analogy, but one may exclude miracles on these grounds only on the circular assumption that they have never happened. Historical evidence for particular miracle claims should thus be investigated rather than being dismissed as a priori impossible.107

Nevertheless, while historians may bracket out questions of causation (as noted above), they are not normally required to do so. If an event happened, it is legitimate to explore the best hypotheses to explain causation or factors contributing to that event.108 Against those who contend that one might not posit a cause with which one does not have direct experience, such a recourse is often necessary in science. For example, physicists often use particles and other factors to explain phenomena before such factors are more directly verified.109 A limited methodological naturalism may be a wise caution against gullibility, but if one insists that any legitimate conclusion must be naturalistic, one's conclusions regarding the possibility of God have been simply defined by one's presuppositions, presuppositions historically framed against belief in an active God.110 As I have mentioned and shall observe more fully in chapter 15, this presupposition does not reflect the sole or even dominant perspective in philosophy of religion today, hence cannot simply appeal to a universal philosophic consensus in its favor.

Some contend that even if a theistic explanation for an event might appear more convincing at present, a purely naturalistic explanation will eventually emerge. This approach attempts to evade a possible "God-of-the-gaps" explanation (a theistic interpretation that might be overturned in light of further discovery). It posits in its place, however, something like a naturalism-of-the-gaps explanation (a naturalistic interpretation that awaits further discovery) and thus presupposes that only a theistic explanation bears any burden of proof.111 Again, this approach is not 107. Cf. Swinburne, Miracle, 33–51, though rightly keeping the bar of evidence fairly high (see esp.

51). In historiography, see here also Tucker, Knowledge, 99 (cf. 52), although he unfortunately follows the more skeptical critics regarding the sources on 99–100 (though perhaps mostly for ancient Israel, 53–59), whereas the trend is at least partly toward a more favorable reading of the sources about Jesus (see, e.g.,

Theissen, Gospels in Context; Theissen and Merz, Guide; Hengel, Mark; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses; Keener,

Historical Jesus; Charlesworth, Jesus within Judaism; esp. now Holmén and Porter, Handbook).

108. Ancient precursors for modern historiographic method did ask why events happened (e.g.,

Polybius 2.56.13; 3.32.2); ancient historians did not, as some contend, ignore lines of cause and effect

(Rajak, Josephus, 102).

109. See here Johnson, Hume, 42 (against John Stuart Mill). Arguing for theism from indirect inference should be no more problematic than the analogous inference of entities in physics (Polkinghorne and Beale, Questions, 29; cf. now also Licona and Van der Watt, "Adjudication of Miracles," 2).

110. See, e.g., the complaint against this approach in Evans, Narrative, 158–61. He allows that the amount of evidence needed to surmount appropriate methodological caution should vary according to the nature of the miracle claim (159) but contends that the demand to eliminate all possible natural explanations before allowing a theistic one simply restates metaphysical naturalism.

111. The approach challenged, for example, in Plantinga, "Science," 109, 112–13. I revisit this observation briefly in ch. 14.

Are Miracles Possible?

neutral: it simply works from the presupposition that theism is a philosophically illegitimate explanation. As David deSilva points out, bracketing out the possibility of supernatural explanations "merely served to authenticate and legitimate a naturalistic worldview over against a supernaturalistic worldview," reinforcing an artificial grid through which Westerners tend to view reality.112 In sociological terms, antisupernaturalism supports itself circularly: our world construction shapes how we understand our experience, then we (like Hume) "make our experience normative for all experience," and we allow no phenomena to challenge our construct.113

Miracles may be viewed as unique events, but history, unlike science, is full of events that are unique in some respects.114 Were historians to begin excluding unique or extremely unusual events, they would have to rule out much of history. Seeking to illustrate this point, in 1819 one scholar, parodying Hume, demonstrated that one could explain away a large measure of Napoleon's life by this method.115 Indeed, the first-century rise of a movement exalting Jesus as Lord within Judaism lacks prior analogy; yet no one denies that this movement began.116

Some distinguish miracles from other sorts of unique events, making them unique in kind. That is, they belong to a category that differs too much from normal experience to ever be deemed probable.117 Yet this approach, which is not shared by all historiographers, again simply begs the question of whether human experience includes any miracles.118 To argue that a supernaturally caused event can have no analogies, one must presuppose that no other supernaturally caused events have occurred, and this constitutes a circular argument. Still more important, at least

112. DeSilva, Introduction, 372; see further idem, "Meaning."

113. DeSilva, "Meaning," 15.

114. Ehrman, Prophet, 195; Wright, Resurrection, 685; cf. Tucker, Knowledge, 240–53. On the unpredictability of historical development and history being of a character quite different from physics, see, e.g., Popper, Historicism. Popper contends "that history is characterized by its interest in actual, singular, or specific events, rather than in laws or generalizations" (Historicism, 143, emphasis his). In citing sources like

Popper on particular points, I do not imply that we share fully common premises; e.g., Popper condemns older "modern" historicism's sense of "progress" as continuing earlier divine teleologies.

115. Richard Whately (Doubts), in Brown, Miracles, 146–47; Blomberg, Gospels, 110. McGrew,

"Miracles," 3.3, points out that other satires of Hume's method appeared in Hudson (Doubts) and Buel

(Lincoln Myth).

116. Wright, Resurrection, 16–17.

117. Ehrman, Prophet, 196. Ehrman contends that no matter how credible the witnesses are, their credibility is less probable than our knowledge that miracles do not happen. Yet such "knowledge" is hardly universally conceded and is in fact the point under debate.

118. Some have argued that events may be unique of themselves but should be able to be classified in larger categories (authors noted in Tucker, Knowledge, 243); but there are exceptions even to this (see

244), and miracles could in any case constitute such a class, again unless one a priori excludes them.

Tucker, writing on historiography, notes that events that appear unique in kind may still be confirmed by other evidence, though one cannot use comparable events to increase the likelihood (244–45). Many events or phenomena initially considered unique gave way to a larger pattern of data as new discoveries were admitted (cf. 245), but attempts to reduce complex historical events to commonalities necessary for analogies have proved inadequate (249–53).

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

from the standpoint of what appear to be miracles, this appeal to analogy and experience today is more apt to cut the other way than when it was formulated,119 since (as I argue at some length in chs. 7–12) supernatural claims belong to the widespread experience of much of humanity today.120 Thus some philosophers of religion today are appealing to contemporary miracle reports to reinforce the plausibility of miracles in principle.121

Does the historical task exclude discussion of superhuman causes or not? To a great extent this question is semantic: words have socially agreed meanings, so how we define them is a matter of choice within a community. If the academy chooses to define "history" in such a way to exclude such causes, however, we must recognize that we have not made the question illegitimate; we have simply circumscribed the epistemic sphere within which our particular discipline works.

We can work within such boundaries (and I do in appropriate settings); we may choose (or not) to define such questions as part of "history," but we have not thereby made them improper objects of academic inquiry.

Even conceding these points, the boundaries themselves reflect a particular line of historical development, namely a particular Western Enlightenment tradition in our discipline; there is no transcultural or transhistorical assent to these boundaries, and some disciplines have already moved beyond them. We cannot appeal to some cosmic "rules of our discipline" to prevent exploration of these issues; those rules evolved in a particular historical context, and as the guild we are allowed to rethink and revise them if needed. That is, we cannot blame the discipline as we have inherited it; we are responsible for what we do with the inheritance. Freedom to reengage old questions from new perspectives is part of what it means to think critically. From a theistic perspective, the exclusion of superhuman causes is arbitrary or even apologetically motivated against theism; from a neutral perspective, it is at best a suspension of the question for the sake of dialoguing based on agreed-on assumptions, not a metaphysical conclusion.122 However we define the rules of the discipline, historiography no more excludes the possibility of knowledge outside its conventional methods than historians would grant that physics does. Historians who choose to ask the questions may ask them with the same academic rigor employed when inferring human causation in events where such causation is debated. In a postmodern context, for better or for worse (or some of each), historiography's rules are shifting.

119. So also Theissen and Merz, Guide, 310; Wink, "Write," 6; cf. Nichols, "Miracles," 705.

120. See, e.g., Jenkins, Next Christendom, 107, 122–31; De Wet, "Signs"; Lambert, Millions, 109–20;

Khai, "Pentecostalism," 268–70; Grazier, Power Beyond; Gardner, Healing Miracles; Harris, Acts Today;

Rumph, Signs; Chavda, Miracle; Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 67–73, 82–83; cf. Berger, Rumor, 1–34.

121. See, e.g., Breggen, "Miracle Reports," 381–84; Robert Larmer (personal correspondence, Aug.

4, 2009).

122. Meanwhile, scholars are in fact allowed to debate various assumptions on which we do not agree and to make cases against other "rules" in our discipline that we deem ill-founded (on questions of detail, e.g., the double dissimilarity criterion).

Are Miracles Possible?

History and Theory A recent issue of History and Theory challenged the ideologically secular bias that has sometimes been rampant in historiography. In particular, historian Brad

Gregory warns that historians presupposing pure metaphysical naturalism have produced a sort of "secular confessional history, parallel to traditional religious confessional history only with different embedded metaphysical beliefs."123 These beliefs, he warns, are so deeply ingrained at the unconscious level that those writing with this bias are far less apt to acknowledge their bias than writers of other confessional histories are.124 In the sense in which he uses "confessional history," the phrase is linked with bias and officially "rejected by most professional historians"—so long as the confessional character is religious.125

Gregory further notes that the traditional forms of social-scientific methods used to read history are often embedded with assumptions about religion that differ markedly from how those not sharing the methodology's assumptions understand it.126 While often regarded as neutral, Gregory argues, these approaches impose "undemonstrable metaphysical beliefs" no less than religious perspectives do.127 Thus, he notes, these beliefs are no less historically contingent than are those of particular religions;128 for example, much of the traditional approach of sociology of religion simply takes for granted without argument that all religion may be reduced to natural social factors—an approach formed in the heyday of antitheistic assumptions in the academy.129 "Historians whose analyses of religion depend upon such views," he concludes, "are therefore writing a form of secular

123. Gregory, "Secular Bias," 132 (from the abstract). Michael Licona brought my attention to this theme issue.

124. Ibid. On historians' perspectives shaping their historiographic decisions, see, e.g., Lonergan,

Method, 214–22 (supporting perspectivism, not relativism).

125. Gregory, "Secular Bias," 135.

126. Ibid., 136. When in nascent psychology Freud and his followers excluded belief in God or miracles as a form of wish fulfillment or projection of a father figure (for faith in miracles as narcissistic fantasy, see, e.g., Merenlahti, "Reality," 16–18, 31), they worked from the explicit presupposition of religion's falsehood at the outset. This reductionist approach did not offer replicable data, and is challenged by many voices today (see, e.g., Gorsuch, "Limits," 283–84; Gaztambide, "Relocating," 29–30). Wilson, "Miracle

Events," 278, in fact contends that miracles have been verified often enough that denial of them represents irrational "passion or prejudice."

127. Gregory, "Secular Bias," 136–38 (quoting 136, emphasis his).

128. Ibid., 136.

129. Gregory shows the specific commitment to metaphysical naturalism in the work of Émile

Durkheim (1912), whose approach helped shape the discipline of sociology of religion (ibid., 139–40).

A social approach to religion is invaluable, but a reduction of all religion to social structures simply assumes metaphysical naturalism (141, 144; so also for reducing religion to politics, 144–46). Durkheim's successors felt no need to demonstrate a methodological premise they now took for granted (142–43). Even past the mid-twentieth century, challenging Durkheim seemed risky, but eventually multiple challenges brought his views into disfavor (Turner, "Advances," 39–40). Gradually religious anthropology emerged, relinquishing anthropology's previous "tight positivism," sympathetic to rather than suspicious of the sincerity of much religious experience (44); Turner regarded the old approach of Durkheim as imposing atheism on other peoples (51–52), the sort of behavior for which anthropologists sometimes castigated missionaries (cf. her comments about Christianity in 51). For more open antecedents, see Poewe, "Rethinking," 253–54.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

confessional history."130 Others also argue that the traditional social-scientific grid that reduced religious experience purely to cultural shaping has been shown untenable in light of subsequent research.131

He contends that a better approach would be to avoid imposing "any metaphysical beliefs" on our subjects.132 Certainly this approach could come closer to claiming the label of neutrality. A truly neutral approach should examine hypotheses rather than dismissing them without consideration. Those who rule out the possibility of historiography speaking about God or other supranatural entities must relinquish the possibility of excluding such explanations as well as of confirming them.133

Some simply assume the irrelevance of the question, however; in their view, true modernity values neither miracles in particular (hence Bultmann's view noted earlier) nor religion in general. Thus some historical scholars bolster academic bias by arguing that religion is no longer plausible in the modern world, a thesis that would surprise, for example, most ordinary people in the United States today, and one historian astonishingly proposes replacing its social function with history.134

But some other historians counter that most modern people have not rejected religion; earlier assumptions about religion becoming increasingly marginalized due to secularization have proved false in many cultures, including in the United

States.135 As Jon Butler points out, modernity "has not produced the disappearance of religion that Weber, Freud, and late-nineteenth-century American religious leaders anticipated and that Hall insists is central to the concept of modernity."136

Indeed, the assumption that modernization would inevitably lead to secularization reflected an ethnocentric extrapolation from earlier Western trends for a global reality that never corresponded to it.137

One might suppose that this failure of predictions could warrant a rethinking of the theoretical foundations that produced them; we often evaluate hypotheses based on whether their predictions succeed. Butler thus argues that history needs

130. Gregory, "Secular Bias," 143.

131. McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 46–47, citing known physiological factors in anomalous experiences, their appearance in diverse cultures, and genetic predispositions to suggestibility (citing on the last point Morgan, "Heritability").

132. Gregory, "Secular Bias," 146. Whether historians concede the possibility of the miraculous in practice or only in principle often depends on their initial presuppositions (Smart, Philosophers, 45). For a further defense of allowing the open question of miracles in historical discussion, see the very helpful work, Martin, "Historians on Miracles"; Martin (424–25) cites others, like J. D. G. Dunn, who do allow for some historical access to miracles.

133. Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 122 (following W. L. Craig, against B. Ehrman); Beckwith,

"History and Miracles," 88.

134. Fasolt, "History and Religion."

135. Cladis, "Modernity"; see also Butler, "Theory"; Hanciles, Beyond Christendom, 38–47; Ecklund,

Science, 133, 152; in the academy, ibid., 89–90, 92; for an example of religion's adaptation to flourish in a secular context, see, e.g., Kennedy, "Customers." On early sociology's expectations of religion's demise, see also Ammerman, "Sociology," 76–77; on religion's persistence against some traditional academic assumptions, see also Haught, Atheism, 58–59.

136. Butler, "Theory," 54.

137. See Hanciles, Beyond Christendom, 38.

Are Miracles Possible?

to grapple afresh with theory concerning religion to produce an interpretation that better accommodates actual social realities.138 David Gary Shaw notes that the opposing of religion and history is a legacy of modernity that neglects the current situation as well as some of the history of historiography.139 Historiography today needs to revise its reading of modernity to accommodate both sacred and secular within its purview.140 In other words, religion should be taken into account and not excluded from public discourse; courtesy should remind us that we are no longer living at the apex of the French Enlightenment.

This may be the appropriate place to broach another historiographic issue raised by postmodern skepticism. This approach correctly recognizes that history is always written from perspectives, as are our sources for writing it; its critique of pretentious claims of pure scientific historiography is well taken. The problem comes when the critique is pushed too far, inconsistently failing to recognize its own limits.

As I shall elaborate more fully in chapter 13 (under the heading "Epistemological

Premises"), limitations in our knowledge need not compel us to relinquish claims to knowledge altogether. With respect to this book, some might complain that most healing claims reported later in this book depend (with a few exceptions) on other witnesses rather than on events that I as the author have witnessed directly or, at still further remove, that most readers have witnessed directly. But as I have noted, without witnesses we would know almost nothing of history; this warning applies all the more to antiquity, my own area of historical research.

For that matter, this limitation also applies to information about parts of the world where we have not lived, to people we do not know in our own parts of the world, and even to most events we have heard about in the lives of people we do know.141 Indeed, we do not expect every individual scientist to repeat every prior experiment because he or she does not trust earlier scientists' records.142 Do we know nothing of history or of world events? Granted, all our sources are usually seriously slanted by observers' and reporters' perspectives; yet we cannot avoid depending on information in these sources if we hope to say anything beyond our own very limited experience. Despite Western culture's individualism, making

138. Butler, "Theory," 60–61.

139. Shaw, "Modernity," recognizing (4) that "religion has turned out in a variety of ways to be more important and a more clearly permanent factor in history than our paradigms had supposed."

140. Shaw, "Modernity," 5 (following C. T. McIntire). He notes (8) that a repeated emphasis in the theme issue on religion and history is the assault on "modernity's definition as non-religious."

141. If one responds that today we can document some events with video cameras, we should note that many such events are not so documented when occurring. Moreover, we do have some healings so documented as well. To make the point, however, we can simply move the question back two centuries, well before the advent of video cameras: did no one in that era know anything about the world not experienced by them firsthand? Making video recordings an epistemic requirement would rule out most historical knowledge, as well as much knowledge about the world today.

142. Cf. Jaki, "Miracles and Physics"; Ward, "Miracles and Testimony," 133; Licona, Resurrection, 103.

The problem is less dramatic in science than in history, however, since experiments are confirmed through multiple tests and must be replicable. Analogies in history are much less precise, and precise experiments normally impossible (as often noted, e.g., Clark, "Miracles and Law," 31).

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

direct experience of events a requisite for knowledge about them, as Hume seems to require for miracles, would postulate an autonomy more severe than any normal person would sanction in practice.

The Religious Factor One of Hume's arguments against miracles is that incompatible religions claim miracles and thus, on his view, their claims cancel each other.143 Although several responses to Hume's argument from incompatible religious claims are possible, we should note that it was not framed in any neutral manner. Hume believed that miracles recounted in religious contexts were not credible, because, he insisted, religious observers who claim miracles are irrational.144 He warned that all testimonial claims were suspect if they supported religious faith, and he treated religious gullibility as a special category more prone to deception than regular, nonreligious gullibility.145

His argument against testimony specifically in the religious sphere146 is drawn not from empirical studies but from the polemic of the deists against Christianity.147 His prejudice concerning the specific gullibility of religious persons is tendentious. He does not address countervailing religious motivations for integrity,148 or the universal desire to conform new information to what one already knows or has affirmed, which can lead the nonreligious to explain away miracle claims as easily as it can lead the religious to be gullible about them. That some Enlightenment thinkers revolted against the epistemological constraints of prior religious tradition is not surprising in view of their milieu; in the academy

143. Hume, Miracles, 40–41. New studies of diverse traditional polytheistic religions had already influenced academic thought about religion in terms of deism (Popkin, "Deism," 27), but the understanding of comparative religions in Hume's day was so limited as to lead him to false conclusions on the evolution of religion (Root, "Introduction," 9). More understandably, Hume argued for the emergence of theism from polytheism (History of Religion, 41–45) and that polytheism was intrinsically more tolerant than monotheism (48–51). Cf. Kugler, "History," 134.

144. Larmer, Water, 105. Hume's prejudice could draw on an established tradition of Protestant and Catholic polemic against each other, denouncing superstition, deception, religious enthusiasm, and the mental instability with which it could be connected (on which see, e.g., Daston, "Facts," 118).

145. Colwell, "Miracles and History," 11, counters that people are as apt to be skeptical as gullible; certainly that is true today, where even some of us who have witnessed apparently extranormal events doubleand triple-check ourselves, grasping for natural explanations. Though defending Hume, Coleman,

"Probability," 214, like others, concedes that Hume treats testimony for "religious miracles" more skeptically "than testimony to marvels." McGrew, "Miracles" (3.2.4) allows that miracle claims marshaled for developed ecclesiastical purposes are more dubious, but contends that this bias fits later conditions better than the more spontaneous claims behind the nt record.

146. Hume, Miracles, 36–53, esp. 36, 49–50, 53.

147. See Burns, Debate, 75–76, for the relevant sources. Writers of the era often stressed the human propensity to believe (ibid., 76–77), but those who note proneness to deception may qualify it with proneness to critical examination (esp. after knowledge of some deceptions). Although not all religious claimants are sincere in their fundamental beliefs, sincere practitioners of faiths that emphasize truth telling may have a special incentive to avoid lying.

148. On this tendentious approach of Hume to religion in some of his other work, see Root,

"Introduction," 17.

Are Miracles Possible?

today, however, it is dogmatic nontheism that offers narrower epistemological constraints.

Despite prejudices that persist in contemporary academia, today most critics recognize that Hume's generalizations about religious people's reliability reflect his own irrational antireligious bias.149 Blind faith may distort perception regardless of its object (religion, romance, politics, etc.), without requiring all testimony from adherents of views to be false.150 Indeed, dogmatic irreligion is no less blinding than dogmatic religion. Hume's mistrust of religious witnesses as misled by religious "enthusiasm"151 blatantly ignores many intellectuals of deep faith of whom he himself was aware. This included not least Robert Boyle, whom I have already noted is often called the father of chemistry.152 Hume's opposition to apologetic use of miracles to support religious claims may seem less neutral and tolerant in today's environment, especially when leveled against all religions, than when first deployed in the heyday of the Enlightenment.

At the same time, his disclaimer of miracles that could favor any particular religion over others retains some attraction in our environment. One often unspoken, perhaps impolite, factor that makes some current Western academicians uncomfortable with claims of supernatural activity is the frequent apologetic use of such claims (i.e., their sign value for their religious claimants). Some critics are concerned that some apologists might exploit apparently supernatural phenomena to favor one religious system over another or to support the value of some religious claims (their frequent function as signs). While this concern might be accurate, some critics therefore fear that acknowledging such phenomena could appear to compromise the academy's neutrality vis-à-vis various worldviews.

When such discomfort interferes with objective investigation, however, it invites critique for several reasons. First, the academy so far has hardly been neutral in its worldviews, as I have been noting. Indeed, historians have documented the early twentieth-century power struggle in which the ultimately dominant side deliberately promoted antireligious agendas in U.S. academia,153 in some cases funded by some of the robber barons,154 and ultimately leading to a climate of antireligious prejudice in many sectors of the academy.155 Far from being religiously neutral, those who a priori rule out any supernatural claims effectively deny the worldviews and religions held by the majority of the world's population. To rule out even asking questions about divine activity is not neutral but, as N. T. Wright

149. See, e.g., Larmer, Water, 105; Beckwith, Argument, 52, and sources he cites. Noting Hume's

Presbyterian friends, Taylor, Hume, 2–3, argues that Hume was not personally antireligious but used such language in this essay as essentially a publicity stunt.

150. Indeed, some adherents are converts convinced by the reports they offer (cf., e.g., 1 Cor 15:8–9).

151. Hume, Miracles, 36, echoing a popular charge against some forms of religious expression in his day.

152. Burns, Debate, 240. Cf. his views in Okello, Case, 82–88.

153. See, e.g., Smith, "Secularizing Education," 103, 152–53; Ecklund, Science, 87–88.

154. Marsden, Soul of University, 279–84, 332–33; Smith, "Rethinking Secularization," 74–77.

155. Marsden, Soul of University, 396, 429–30, 437–40; idem, Outrageous Idea, 3–7, 13–43. Note also comments on some academic bias against religion in ch. 14.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

objects, an act of cultural hegemony.156 We might regard this assumption as right or wrong, but as a starting assumption it is hardly neutral. Like atheism, deism is no more religiously neutral than theism is; one cannot simply rule out of court the alternatives to one's worldview while claiming neutrality.

Second, this approach confuses how a phenomenon might be exploited (in this case, for apologetic purposes) with the authenticity (open to further interpretation) of its occurrence; these are distinct questions. Thus this approach in the name of objectivity risks compromising objectivity. A more genuinely objective approach, although one that requires a more multidisciplinary competence than expertise in any single relevant field may confer, would examine various competing truth claims.

On atheistic or deistic premises, divinely driven supernatural phenomena cannot exist; on the premises of many faiths, they must exist; on the agnostic premises from which critical intellectual inquiry claims to begin, one must investigate the evidence to determine whether or not they do exist. This attempt at a neutral starting point does not mean that those who engage in the discussion do not already have some personal views, which many inevitably do. Rather, it means that for the purpose of academic dialogue, they agree to suspend judgment, or at least to listen respectfully, while considering and presenting evidence.

Third, if one a priori assumes that neutrality in the historical quest demands that one must not find data that could be construed as favoring the truth claims of any particular religious movement or movements, one potentially subordinates the objectivity of one's method to desired conclusions. In fact, such an assumption further assumes a particular perspective about religion, sometimes pontificating from a standpoint of cultural superiority without much particular knowledge of religion. With respect to our particular subject, anthropologists document experiences of paranormal cures—however outsiders may define or explain them—in a variety of religious cultures, though in some more than in others.

Incompatible Religions Claim Miracles?

Hume himself may illustrate this predisposition to neutralize religious particularities when he offers the above-noted complaint that incompatible religions all claim miracles. He probably drew this argument from the deists, who in turn had used similar arguments of Protestants and Catholics polemicizing against each other's miracles.157 Hume advances this observation to argue that miracle claims as a whole are therefore suspect (part of a universally or at least widely tendentious religious rhetoric).158 But using this observed incompatibility as an objection to miracles fails to reckon with multiple potential philosophic alternatives to the 156. Wright, Resurrection, 712–13.

157. Burns, Debate, 72–73; see ch. 10 below.

158. Houston, Miracles, 203. Given various possible alternative explanations, Sider, "Historian," 316, contends that the argument by comparison with founders of other religions constitutes a false generalization from analogy. Cf. the observations of Brooke, "Science," 22, comparing arguments of Matthew Tindal.

Tindal was a deist, though of more moderate stripe than some of his deist predecessors (see, e.g., Mullin,

Are Miracles Possible?

objection. For example, such miracles could be understood as supreme powers' "goodwill" toward people of different faiths "without necessarily endorsing" particular beliefs;159 the related idea that most miracles in response to prayers do not explicitly specify a particular religious system;160 the systems could be less incompatible than their adherents suppose;161 or one could argue that there are multiple supernatural or at least superhuman powers, a view held by traditional religions and even by most traditional forms of monotheism.162

One need not subscribe to a particular one or combination of these responses to acknowledge that Hume's objection is massively vulnerable to logical criticisms that he failed to anticipate. Already his contemporaries challenged some of his premises on this matter. For example, some of his early evidentialist critics insisted on inductive examination of the miracle claims in question, arguing that the competing claims for miracles were historically weaker than those in the nt.

Likewise, only those miracles clearly designed to support a particular system count as evidence for it, so even if other miracles were proved to occur they would not undercut the contemporary Anglican apologetic.163 One may agree or disagree with using miracles for apologetic purposes, but the logic of these objections weakens or undercuts this argument of Hume against that use.

History, 166; Lawton, Miracles, 35–37; Richardson, Age of Science, 37; Brown, Philosophy, 77; idem, Miracles,

50–51; Frei, Eclipse, 61). Locke had already sought to address this question (see Dumsday, "Locke").

159. Houston, Miracles, 204; cf. Polkinghorne, Science and Providence, 58; Breggen, "Miracle Reports,"

6. Licona, Resurrection, 148, cites here 2 Kgs 5:11–14.

160. Swinburne, "Introduction," 17 (specifying Jesus's resurrection as one of the exceptions); cf.

Larmer, Water, 108–9.

161. Houston, Miracles, 204; Twelftree, Miracle Worker, 43. Such a solution is quite popular today even in the extreme form in which all religions share the same core (an idea reminiscent of the Enlightenment optimism of finding the universal rational "core" to all religion, noted in Brooke, "Science," 25). Nevertheless,

I offer it only as a hypothetical objection because I believe that it fails to do full justice to the evidence and suffers from logical fallacies. This solution, if applied to all religious systems, risks reducing a number of potentially competing systems to a commonality that most of them would reject (despite overlap among many of them on many points), a commonality that may not be plausible in the end (cf., e.g., arguments in Woodward, Miracles, 20; Groothuis, Religions; Netland, Voices; Fernando, Attitude). It also assumes that all religion is benign, but the fruits of Jim Jones, David Koresh, and the Nazis' Reich Church suggest otherwise.

To reduce that claim of benignity to "all religion-that-becomes-widespread is benign" fails to show how long-term popularity constitutes a criterion for becoming benign. The same qualification might be applied to the goal of truth, which need not be identical with being benign; popularity is an inadequate criterion.

162. Cf., e.g., Clark, "Miracles," 210; Rev 13:13; 16:14. Hume's argument cannot even begin to make sense on this level without presupposing the only two options being atheism/deism or the form of monotheism dominant in his day, ignoring polytheism and monolatry. Not only henotheism (allowing other deities) but also traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all allow for both good angels and evil demons. On the large-scale academic disappearance of the preternatural category in the era immediately preceding Hume, see Daston, "Facts," 100–113; cf. Hiebert, "Excluded Middle," 43. Nevertheless, early modern apologists for miracles such as Joseph Glanvill and Robert Boyle continued to attribute paranormal events outside proper theological contexts to such other forces (Burns, Debate, 49–51, 55; for others, e.g.,

107–9); some others, like William Fleetwood, claimed that only God could perform miracles but that he sometimes allowed them to happen through the devil or unscrupulous human agents who misinterpreted his purposes (97–99).

163. See the survey of these criticisms from Hume's era in Burns, Debate, 242–44.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

Moreover, Hume's complaint ignores some concrete data. Not least, he failed to give attention to the concrete fact that not all religions equally claim miracles.164

Further, not all miracle claims are equally well attested; for example, those in historical narrative recounting recent events are not comparable in historical value to legends transmitted orally for centuries or surfacing first in generally nonfactual genres.165 It is a logical fallacy to reject stronger claims simply because weaker ones exist;166 on such grounds one could dispute most kinds of truth claims, since they usually have false or weaker competitors.167 Hume himself had given at least lip service to evaluating the credibility and number of witnesses and the like; by treating all claims equally, he treats them uncritically, simply presupposing what he hopes to prove.

Most important, Hume's counting the testimonies of different religions against one another is poor logic in any case; no court would throw out two testimonies on the allegation that one is false.168 Some could be true and others false; but the recognition that some miracle claims may be (and in fact are) false does nothing to damage the possibility that some other miracle claims may prove true.169 My goal here is not to favor a specific possible response or combination of responses to Hume over the others on this matter, but to point out that, once potential

164. Purtill, "Miracles," 199–200; Houston, Miracles, 204 (noting that Islam, for example, does not claim many); Twelftree, Miracle Worker, 43; Smith, Comparative Miracles (in detail, though sometimes tendentiously; summary esp. 178); Brown, Thought, 247–48; cf. Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection,"

123. Most scholars believe that the founders of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam did not claim to work miracles, though Islam and later forms of Buddhism allow for miracles (Clark, "Miracles," 203–4; Smith,

Comparative Miracles [106–37, 179–80 on Muhammad, 150–56 on Buddha]; Wright, Miracle, 57–62;

Purtill, "Proofs," 46–47 [comparing later tradition on Muhammad's horse ride to the moon]; Licona,

Resurrection, 178; Pagán, "Miracles" [questioning those attributed to Muhammad]; cf. the lateness of the tradition of Buddha's miracles in Woodward, Miracles, 26). Traditional Islam associates miracles especially with historic apostles and prophets (only the Qur'an with Muhammad); see Wensinck, "Mu'djiza"; but for subsequent traditions, see Hoffman and McGuire, "Miracles," 224; for Islamic and Hindu supernaturalism, see my note earlier in the chapter and many non-Christian claims noted in ch. 7. Yet miracles are central to Christianity (because associated with Jesus's ministry) in a way that they are not central to some other faiths (cf. Hoffman and McGuire, "Miracles," 221–24). Tens of thousands of cures are attributed annually to the Hindu deity Venkateswara, and paranormal phenomena to Hindu yogis, Christian Science, and other circles that are theologically incompatible with the majority of my examples in this book (Hiebert,

Reflections, 239). Different religions would explain the presence of supernatural phenomena in other religions differently. Hinduism, for example, can accommodate a wide range of other perspectives under its umbrella, whereas monotheism by its nature is more exclusivist and in some forms attributes other religions' signs to negative spiritual forces; both might allow for alternate spiritual forces at work.

165. Johnson, Hume, 88; Beckwith, Argument, 55; Clark, "Miracles," 200–201; Jensen, "Logic," 151;

Breggen, "Miracle Reports," 6; Licona and Van der Watt, "Adjudication of Miracles," 5; Licona, Resurrection,

146–47.

166. Larmer, Water, 108.

167. Clark, "Religions," 61.

168. Houston, Miracles, 205, considers inept a modern court that would favor a defense argument that rested its entire case on an inconsistency between two prosecution witnesses. He notes (206–7) that the best account is not weakened by evidence adduced in favor of weaker competitors; all evidence must be weighed.

169. See Johnson, Hume, 81.

Are Miracles Possible?

alternatives are factored in, his argument from competing religions is too frail to bear any weight.

Some argue that Hume viewed the history of miracles as people claiming them to justify their own sects.170 But in fact, new religions often do not claim miracles, and without examination one cannot assume that a new religion has invented miracles rather than that experiences of miracles have called a new religion into being.171

Disbelief in Miracles as a Dogmatic Assumption?

All these points aside, we must also examine the question of alternate explanations for supernatural claims (as in chs. 13–15). An extranormal phenomenon need not be construed as divinely or even supernaturally caused simply because those who experience it so interpret it.172 Scholars working from a variety of religious and philosophical assumptions may recognize the validity of claims about events (say, a spontaneous remission of a disease) without necessarily accepting the claimant's interpretation of the event (say, divine healing). Some events offer more compelling evidence for supernatural activity than others, but where one places the bar depends in great measure on one's initial assumptions.

My point here is simply to say that while some interpretations may be more plausible than others in an academic setting (we might prefer cumulative evidence in controlled studies, to the extent that those could be conducted on such matters), we must be honest with ourselves and our students about the philosophic grid through which we sift the evidence. We must not confuse our presuppositions with the evidence, nor dare we confuse them with neutrality.173 As Alan J. Torrance observes, "the assessment of probability is in no small measure a function of one's epistemic base." If one presupposes dogmatic antisupernaturalism, one will assign to all miracle claims a zero probability. This verdict is not necessary, however, for those open to other possibilities.174

Views about whether any intelligence exists outside nature are interpretations, not data, hence belong to a different sphere of reasoning than purely empirical scientific expertise confers. As one scholar puts it, facts in isolation "are unintelligible and nonexplanatory," inviting explanation.175 Yet science as science in the strictest sense proceeds inductively, accumulating finite bodies of information and constructing patterns. The interpretation that structures the information, by 170. Slupic, "Interpretation," 535.

171. Taylor, Hume, 16–17.

172. On the role of personal experience in typical charismatic epistemology, see Poewe, "Rethinking,"

250–52. Hume's epistemology valued personal experience highly, but he would have considered charismatics' experience subjective, since he did not share it.

173. Except to the extent that our working premise is open to the most plausible readings of the evidence. And even there, we must be open to redefining our understanding of "plausibility" if sufficient evidence so demands.

174. Torrance, "Probability," 259.

175. Varghese, "Introduction," 15.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

contrast, is ultimately metascientific.176 Even moving to the metascientific level may presuppose an intelligence that exceeds pure, random naturalism. Einstein believed that acceptance of the world's "rationality or intelligibility" also entailed belief in "a superior mind," which he defined as God.177

As philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn has noted, even scientific hypotheses, which often reign for a period of time until a paradigm shift provides fuller explanatory models, are persuasive only to those within historic communities that accept the paradigm in question,178 often on what he calls "faith."179 The scientific method involves explanatory models for empirical evidence; even when the evidence is undisputed, some explanations (such as Newtonian physics) prove inadequate for some situations as further discoveries expand the range of available evidence.180

Rationalism and empiricism often presented themselves as throwing off an older epistemology of revelatory authority, yet these systems demand (by authority) an a priori acceptance of their own epistemologies.181 Put more simply: everyone has presuppositions. Those who dismiss others' evidence because those offering it have different presuppositions are being neither charitable nor open-minded, and they short-circuit the possibility of dialogue.

If an eyewitness claims that she has witnessed someone raised from the dead—and many eyewitnesses do offer such claims, as I shall note later in this book—one is free to explore multiple explanations for such claims. But to simply assume, barring other plausible naturalistic explanations, that such claims must be disingenuous in each case

176. Ibid., 11, on "the Principle of Explanation."

177. Ibid.; cf. Spitzer, Proofs, 48. I do not by citing Einstein imply that he would support the notion of miracles (he followed Spinoza's pantheism; Frankenberry, Faith, x, 143–45, 151–52; thus he resisted the indeterminism of quantum mechanics, ibid., 145–46); I cite him only for the point in question here. Einstein held that he maintained a deep Jewish faith, but it was one of his own definition (Stanley, "Einstein," 195).

178. Kuhn, Structure, 94.

179. Kuhn speaks of trusting or putting "faith" in scientific paradigms, a "decision" that "can only be made on faith" (ibid., 158)—language more often traditionally associated with fideism.

180. Cf. Batens, "Role," 48; Loewer, "Determinism," 331. Nevertheless, a physicist responds that Newtonian physics retains its place (even in physics graduate programs) within its sphere, with continuing practical application in engineering. Newer theories simply modify it for different conditions (on modifying theories in light of new evidence, see also Smart, Philosophers, 37). Thus "special relativity reduces to the Newtonian case when relative speeds are low compared with the speed of light," and large groupings of particles "tend to follow Newtonian physics" in most cases, despite "the effects of quantum mechanics . . . on small size scales"

(Chris Keener, Jan. 27, 2009). Philosophers of science, however, debate how to describe the extent of this modification. Thus whether Newtonian physics is merely inadequate or even incompatible with the Einsteinian paradigm remains a matter of debate (Kuhn, Structure, 98–105; some in Worrall, "Change," 287–88); already

Whitehead remarked on the demise of the once-grand Newtonian physics (Frankenberry, Faith, 178), and others continue to employ such language (e.g., Polkinghorne, Physics, 17, though on 49 he notes that Kuhn overstated the contrast). For a different example, Maxwell's reigning paradigms likewise faltered with new evidence (Kuhn, Structure, 107–8; Polkinghorne, Physics, 56–57). Some contend that modern physics in some respects adopts positions more like "Newton's predecessors" than his followers (Kuhn, Structure, 108; cf. Young, "Chaos," 227–28). On quantum theory vs. classical physics, see also Joos, "Emergence."

181. Note how textbooks, by simplifying and articulating as fact reigning paradigms, often promote an epistemology of authority (in science, see Kuhn, Structure, 136–39). The history of scientific "progress" is often rewritten from the standpoint of current paradigms (ibid., 167). The nature of scientific investigation does, however, significantly mitigate the dangers of the authority approach (167–68).

Are Miracles Possible?

exalts one's presuppositions above the evidence. The presence of some less certain claims to this effect does not license us to dismiss cases from credible witnesses.

Moreover, if in some of these cases a supernatural explanation is a plausible one, scholars ought not to feel intellectually obligated to rule it out, as if Hume's eighteenth-century essay has the final epistemological word. A critic might respond that I am arguing against the consensus methodological assumption of Western scholarship. As I have attempted to show, however, that assumption is historically contingent and has never been effectively demonstrated.182 If an antisupernatural consensus exists, it exists more by historic default than by most of its supporters having examined the reasons for their belief. We would also be using "consensus" in terms of majority practice rather than unanimity; indeed, I believe that there are far more scholars in our discipline who allow for divine activity than such a statement of a consensus would warrant.

In any case, I believe that a paradigm shift is in order. In any discipline, consensus must sometimes be overturned for progress to occur. Whether such a shift will happen in my lifetime I do not know, and I do not suppose that a single book would bring it about. But should we not grant greater credence to the word of a thousand eyewitnesses (even if that were all there were) than to the insistence of a hundred thousand nonwitness colleagues merely restating unproved assumptions?

(One would hardly expect an officer at an accident scene to exclude all eyewitnesses as biased and thus turn to nonobservers for the most reliable information.)

Granted, interpretation is a question distinct from that of testimony's reliability, and our ability to evaluate the nature of the claims in subsequent chapters is in a number of cases very limited; their relevance to the thesis of potential supernatural activity varies. Nevertheless, these observations need not invalidate the principle that, should some of these claims prove best explained on supernatural terms, a rethinking of our reductionist premises should be in order.

The Shift in the Western Worldview The Western worldview has been shifting toward a more open posture toward other worldviews. Although we need not uncritically embrace all worldview shifts as beneficial, we often cannot accommodate new knowledge without being willing to consider stretching or replacing traditional paradigms.

Scholars often begin with fundamental principles and seek to construct and defend a case from those principles. As philosophers of science note, however, even supposedly fundamental principles—presuppositions that we take for granted— must be open to revision in the light of further discovery.183 In science as in other

182. Moreover, assigning burden of proof based on academic consensus repeats the fallacy with which philosophers of science once charged religion: epistemic appeals to authority and consensus rather than fair-minded investigation of evidence.

183. See discussion in Popper, Myth of Framework, 59–61. Popper argues that the inductive, scientific approach to knowledge is limited even in yielding probabilities, given the inadequacy of its approaches

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

disciplines, paradigm shifts become revolutions in ways of conceptualizing the universe,184 bearing changes in worldview.185 Theories succeed by proving more persuasive than their competitors,186 but once they become dominant they are displaced only with difficulty. Academic politics can play a role in their resilience.187

When changes do occur, they can prove dramatic; some philosophers of science note that, because of new ways of framing the evidence, even some of the hard data may appear to change.188 Professionalization, however, means that such paradigm shifts usually face considerable resistance before taking hold.189 Some resistance to new extranormal claims from around the world is thus not surprising, though the quantity of these claims is now becoming overwhelming.

A Shift among Scholars Resistance or not, a shift in worldview has been occurring, and Bultmann's once ready assumption that no one in the modern world believes in miracles is even more demonstrably false today than when he claimed it. Likewise, as I have noted in the last chapter and this one, the particular arguments once used by Spinoza, Hume, and others to form the modern consensus against miracles made sense only on the philosophic and scientific presuppositions of their era, not those of our own.190 to probability (Conjectures, 64–65). He challenges both essentialist and instrumentalist paradigms (see ibid., 97–114).

184. See Kuhn, Structure. Though Kuhn's thesis was itself revolutionary and widely received, there has also been criticism (see some essays in Gutting, Paradigms, including Shapere, "Structure"). MacIntyre,

"Crises," 73–74, argues for the need to locate theories in their specific historic contexts.

185. Kuhn, Structure, 111–35.

186. Ibid., 154–55. Working to conceive of alternate hypotheses should be inherent in the process of testing hypotheses (Feyerabend, "Problems 1"; he illustrates the value of this contention in the apparently counterinductive yet ultimately successful approach of Copernicus and Galileo, in "Problems 2," 280–82,

322–23, and passim).

187. In addition to previously prevailing academic views, Galileo's problems included (see

Frankenberry, Faith, 6) politics in the court system, "a personal sense of betrayal between Galileo and Pope Urban VIII," and (cf. also Osler, "Revolution," 98) concerns regarding the Reformation. Galileo's academic enemies were wedded to older paradigms inherited from Ptolemy. The political element of academics is true today as in Galileo's day: though arguments for paradigms are typically portrayed in terms of models' explanatory value, "the issue is which paradigm should in the future guide research on problems many of which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve completely" (Kuhn, Structure,

157; on the politics, see, e.g., Barbour, Religion and Science, 14–15; MacIntyre, "Crises," 61; for nuancing the history, cf. Heidelberger, "Astronomy"). From a sociological approach, Wuthnow, "Contradictions,"

164–65, notes scientists' competition in constructing views of reality (following Latour and Woolgar,

Laboratory Life, esp. 243).

188. Kuhn, Structure, 135.

189. Ibid., 64–65. Crises for old paradigms, such as unanswerable questions, often pave the way for new paradigms (see 66–76). Nevertheless, new ones often face considerable attacks before becoming acceptable (e.g., 107, 133); scholars tend to accept old solutions to problems until an overwhelming amount of new evidence forces a reappraisal of their tenability (169).

190. Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:519–20 (citing, e.g., Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics); cf. also Wink, "Stories," 213. See further arguments for the possibility of concrete divine activity in history in the essays in Geivett and Habermas, Miracles.

Are Miracles Possible?

More scholars today acknowledge that the long-standing academic assumption that only atheistic or deistic approaches can be objective (i.e., epistemologically neutral) presupposes that atheism or deism is self-evidently true; it does not prove their truth, and it is certainly not neutral. Christian philosopher William Lane

Craig contends:

The presupposition of the impossibility of miracles should, contrary to the assumption of nineteenth and for the most part twentieth century biblical criticism, play no role in determining the historicity of any event. . . . The presupposition against the possibility of miracles survives in theology only as a hangover from an earlier

Deist age and ought to be once for all abandoned.191

New Testament scholars have become increasingly less comfortable with such unproved postulates of the Enlightenment era. As Leonhard Goppelt remarks with reference to the assertion that miracles are historically impossible, critical reflection must question that proposition, because "there is no such thing today as a complete and generally accepted philosophical understanding of reality."192 "History" in the sense of "what happened," other scholars note, may be distinguished from "history" in the theoretical sense of "what can be explained by natural causes without recourse to supernatural causes."193 As theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg points out, "The decision to exclude God from the public understanding of reality is of course not a specifically historical issue," but a "prejudice" that inevitably can only misguide the historical quest if divine action in fact occurs.194

Likewise, historical Jesus scholar Marcus Borg rightly points out, The primary intellectual objection to it [supernatural activity] flows from a rigid application of the modern worldview's definition of reality. Yet the modern view is but one of a large number of humanly constructed maps of reality. It is historically the most recent and impressive because of the degree of control it has given us; but it is no more an absolute map of reality than any of the previous maps. All are relative, products of particular histories and cultures; the modern one, like its predecessors, will be superseded.195

Indeed, theoretical science has already abandoned "the modern worldview in its popular form."196

Other nt scholars offer similar warnings. For example, Charles Talbert notes that the antisupernaturalist, materialistic worldview is less dominant today, not 191. Craig, "Miracles," 43, concluding his discussion in the study; similarly Craig, Faith, 154. Cf. Boyd,

Sage, 113–28; Wink, "Stories," 211 (regarding "materialism").

192. Theology, 1:145.

193. France, "Authenticity," 105–7; cf. Wright, Resurrection, 12–13.

194. Pannenberg, "History," 64 (cf. also 71).

195. Borg, Vision, 33–34.

196. Ibid., 34. Definitions of science vary; see Okello, Case, 13, following Plantinga.

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

because "of new evidence" but because of "shifting evaluations of what is possible."197

Similarly, Rick Strelan notes that scholars are moving beyond the old paradigms and becoming more open to examining supranormal phenomena claims in early

Christian sources, albeit most often in exclusively scientific (e.g., neurophysiological) terms.198 Scholars addressing extranormal claims increasingly reckon with the bias of their own "post-Enlightenment Western" worldview in seeking to grapple with miracle and magic claims in ancient sources foreign to our understanding.199

Do Modern People Believe in Miracles?

In considering the shift in the Western worldview, we should not take into account only those who are experts in narrowly defined fields of knowledge, not all of them equally relevant to the matter at hand. Consensus does not determine truth, and many statements of consensus are premature in any case. As I have noted more than once in this book, some older modern theologians like Bultmann declared that "mature" modern people do not believe in miracles, and that "no one can or does seriously maintain" the nt worldview.200 Those following such an approach can examine miracle accounts' theological and social functions while dismissing their historical foundations.201 Yet even as some theologians were demythologizing the Bible to make it relevant for an antisupernaturalist audience, belief in miracles was rising among the Western public.202 Some biblical scholars, too, have long questioned whether Bultmann's approach risked demythologizing away not just the form but the content of the message.203

197. Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 216. Grace Jantzen suggests that monistic reductionism without room for God or miracles "is as inadequate as the dualism which it was supposed to supersede" (Jantzen,

"Miracles," 357).

198. Strelan, Strange Acts, 9.

199. Note, e.g., Reimer, Miracle, x.

200. Bultmann, "Mythology," 4 (noting on 5–6 that modern beings presuppose all activity as coming from ourselves, not alien powers, even deity, and on 9 forcing a choice between accepting or rejecting the entire nt worldview); cf. idem, "Problem of Miracle"; Max Weber's designation of modernity as "disenchanted" (in Remus, Healer, 106). Bultmann allows that God acts existentially in ways communicated by mythical language ("Mythology," 32; "Demythologizing," 110), but Bultmann employs the presence of miracles as a criterion of inauthenticity in Jewish texts (Tradition, 58); he denies that the historical continuum may be "interrupted" by supernatural interventions (e.g., "Exegesis," 147; cf. "Demythologizing,"

122; Perrin, Bultmann, 86; Thiselton, Horizons, 292) and affirms as "myth" whatever involves supernatural forces (Bultmann, "Demythologizing," 95; cf. "Mythology," 9; Perrin, Bultmann, 77; Poland, Criticism,

11; Richardson, Age of Science, 109). Although now arguing against the dominant culture, cf. similarly the antisupernaturalism of Mack, Myth, 51, 54, 76, 209–15. Beit-Hallahmi, "Signs," 181, disdainful of anything supernatural, regards the demythologizing approach as an obvious attempt to circumvent the narratives' plain meanings.

201. Cf. Kleine, "Wissenschaft," emphasizing investigation of their functions rather than investigation into their historical reliability; such questions can be bracketed methodologically.

202. Mullin, Miracles, 262. Wuthnow, Heaven, 115–16, emphasizes the rising interest in the miraculous, though also documenting the polyvalent character of these popular beliefs (cf., e.g., 229n25).

203. E.g., Robinson, "Challenge," 330; O'Connell, "Miracles," 55; Kallas, Significance, 112–13.

Demythologizing struck not only at eschatology but also the "mythology" of Christology (rightly perceived by Mussner, Miracles, 81) and theology.

Are Miracles Possible?

The observation that belief in miracles persists (indeed, flourishes) in the modern world is even more obvious today than it could have been in Bultmann's era.

As John Meier points out, a 1989 Gallup poll showed that 82 percent of the people in the United States believe in miracles today, with only 6 percent categorically rejecting that view.204 A different Time poll from 1995 reports more than two-thirds of people in the United States affirming miracles, with churches emphasizing signs constituting the "fastest-growing" segment of U.S. Christianity.205 A 1996 media poll suggests that roughly 80 percent of medical patients believe that prayer can be helpful in healing.206 Seventy-two percent of U.S. respondents in a 2003 Newsweek poll believe that God may cure even a mortally ill person for whom science has surrendered hope.207 Even a majority of Americans who rarely or never attend church believe that miracles probably do occur.208

A more recent Pew Forum survey concludes that 79 percent affirm that "miracles still occur today as in ancient times"209 (a statement that would exclude not only antisupernaturalists but even the strictest conservative Christian cessationists, who accept biblical miracles but do not believe that miracles occur in the same way today).210

More surprisingly, 34 percent of Americans claim to have witnessed or experienced divine healing; these figures include 30 percent for Hindus; 34 percent for members of Orthodox churches; 27 percent for Catholics; 54 percent for members of historic African-American churches; 50 percent for evangelicals (with Pentecostals and independent charismatics perhaps raising the overall evangelical figures); and so forth.211 I will offer some even more dramatic figures internationally in the next

204. Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:11, 520–21; Woodward, Miracles, 21 (citing Gallup and Castelli, Religion,

58); Johnson and Butzen, "Prayer," 249; cf. Keener, John, 266. Naturally, not all who answer Gallup polls share identical interpretations concerning their answers (cf. the observation of Cadbury, "Intimations," 80).

205. Gibbs, "Miracles," 64 (cited also by Breggen, "Miracle Reports," 381); the "fastest-growing" claim also appears on 67. It is doubtful that the percentage dropped thirteen points (to Time's 69 percent) in six years from the Gallup poll, but how one asks and interprets questions matters (Gallup polls may reflect more optimism regarding Christianity), and one must allow for a significant margin of error. Perhaps a median estimate around 75 percent is likely, but this again might depend on what people mean by "miracles."

206. Matthews and Clark, Faith Factor, 4 (citing polls from USA Today Weekend and Time). Forty-four percent of respondents in a poll in California claimed to use prayer to address musculoskeletal pain, and 54 percent of those who prayed for their pain found it "very helpful" (Koenig, Medicine, 55, citing Cronan et al., "Prevalence").

207. Johnson and Butzen, "Prayer," 249.

208. Wuthnow, Heaven, 122.

209. "Landscape Survey," 11 at http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report2–religious-landscape-study

-full.pdf (cited by Licona, "Historicity of Resurrection," 111n89; accessed Dec. 2, 2008).

210. Traditional cessationists apparently account for a minority of evangelicals today, since evangelicals have one of the highest proportions of belief in present miracles (with not only a strong majority agreeing, but 61 percent agreeing intensely, the same percentage that strongly affirm the existence of angels and demons), second only to Mormons (roughly 80 percent) and close to members of historically black

Protestant churches (58 percent).

211. At http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report2–religious-landscape-study-full.pdf (accessed Dec.

2, 2008). Matthews and Clark, Faith Factor, 23–24, cites a much smaller 1986 survey of 586 people in Richmond, Virginia, in which 14 percent of respondents claimed to have experienced what they thought was divine healing. They also cite another study (on 76: King, Sobal, and DeForge, "Experience") in which

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

chapter: hundreds of millions of persons alive today claim that they have witnessed or experienced miraculous healings. One might disagree with all of these claims, but one cannot simply arbitrarily exclude all the claimants from the modern world.

While numbers are lower in some regions, such as many parts of Europe,212 they are higher in some other regions, such as most of Africa and Latin America.

Most faiths affirm supernatural activity. Orthodox Judaism,213 Christianity,214 and Islam,215 as well as many Hindu and Buddhist traditions,216 traditional tribal religions, spiritism, and in fact most worldviews not derived from Western rationalism, including its Marxist derivatives that are specifically atheistic, affirm the reality of supernatural phenomena.217 Bultmann's position summarily dismissed such worldviews—easily the majority of the world's population—as not part of the modern world.218 Perhaps they were not part of the modern world in which he half of respondents claimed to have "watched faith healers on television; 6 percent said that they had been healed by faith healers, and 15 percent said they knew someone who had been healed in this way."

212. Religious beliefs tend to be higher in the Americas (Höllinger and Smith, "Religion," 235), but Asian healing techniques are more common in northwest Europe (238). For the charting of cultural variations in paranormal beliefs by country, see McClenon, Events, 21 (with Iceland, Britain, and Germany reporting more such beliefs than, say, Denmark). Statistically, "early religious training" is more apt to dispose one to religious, including paranormal, beliefs (Wuthnow, Heaven, 125–26), which could account for the geographic disparity to a high degree.

213. In addition to the Scriptures, subsequent Jewish history includes accounts of miracles. Some of the ultraorthodox (a small minority within Judaism today), like Lubavitch Hasidim, have even looked to their rebbe for wonders in response to his blessings (Woodward, Miracles, 375–77 on Rabbi Schneerson before, and to a lesser extent after, his death). Nevertheless, the power attributed to legendary rebbes declined after the Nazi Holocaust (see Lewis, "Martyrdom"). For miracle and prophecy stories regarding the founder of Hasidism, see Praise of Baal Shem Tov, 3, 14–15, 22–24, 31, 71, 213–14, 218–19, 227,

241–42, and passim; Ben-Amos and Mintz, "Introduction," xxiv, xxix, xxx. These stories often resemble somewhat analogous late medieval Christian hagiography.

214. See chs. 8–12 and sources cited there.

215. For later Islamic tradition on Muhammad's miracles, cf., e.g., Sahas, "Formation"; Woodward,

Miracles, 173–205; note Sufi saints in Woodward, Miracles, 206–30. Natural and supernatural cures are often combined in folk Islam (Shenk, "Conversations," 7; Hiebert, "Power Encounter," 57); extraordinary signs are attributed to "Baba Farid, a Pakistani Muslim saint" (Hiebert, Reflections, 239); Islam in South

Asia pursues healing by spiritual as well as material means (Hermansen, "Healing," 411–12; cf. Sufism on 414–16); Muslim faith healers exist in South Africa (Ally and Laher, "Perceptions").

216. For Hindu miracles, see Dumsday, "Locke," 421; Thouless, "Miracles," 255–56; some Hindus believing that deities consume sacrifices, in Wood, "Appetites"; note miracles attributed in the past to Krishna, Woodward, Miracles, 249–66; to past Hindu saints in Woodward, Miracles, 267–95; for current

Hindu gurus, see, e.g., Woodward, Miracles, 378–82. Tens of thousands of cures are attributed annually to the Hindu deity Venkateswara and paranormal phenomena are attributed to Hindu yogis (Hiebert,

Reflections, 239). For miracles attributed to the Buddha, see Woodward, Miracles, 296–328; to Buddhist saints, Woodward, Miracles, 329–62. See especially the many non-Christian sources for healing claims cited in the note in ch. 7.

217. See, e.g., Woodward, Miracles, 23–24 (citing various religions); Abogunrin, "Search"; Mbiti, Religions,

253–57; Hollenweger, Pentecostals, 129; Nanan, "Sorcerer"; Ashe, Miracles, 26–27; Loos, Miracles, 4

("universal"); McClymond, Stranger, 82–83 (citing the views of "billions of people," probably without exaggeration). The kinds of questions one asks about miracles also vary in different cultural contexts

(e.g., Arowele, "Signs").

218. For a critique of Bultmann's demythologization program and its theological consequences, see Bockmuehl, Theology, 9–76, especially 70–74. For a critique of demythologizing from a historical

Are Miracles Possible?

instinctively moved,219 but to extrapolate from his personal sphere to all modernity suggests a major induction based on a comparatively small range of data—a move reminiscent of Hume. Such summary dismissal of the supernatural without appeal to satisfying contemporary philosophical arguments or concrete scientific data may have succeeded among those who shared the assumptions held by Bultmann's mid-twentieth-century Western academic setting, but evidently does not satisfy most of those outside that fairly elite subculture.

By defining modernity ethnocentrically in terms of a mid-twentieth-century academic Western elite, Bultmann was simply restating his own philosophic presuppositions, many of which (such as those reflecting the influence of Heidegger) are no longer fashionable in the academy.220 Some leading scholars today argue that Bultmann was obsessed with a now out-of-date worldview (one that Anthony

Thiselton attributes to his neo-Kantian roots).221 Regardless of how fashionable the view may remain in many circles that genuine supernatural activity by a deity, deities, or spirits may be dismissed a priori, in today's multicultural world it is uncritically naive for otherwise critical scholars to simply accept and propagate that consensus without analysis of the empirical data. Normally we affirm that academic inquiry should leave hypotheses open to challenge and proceed inductively on the basis of evidence.222 Indeed, no less a scholar than Karl Barth criticized

Bultmann for uncritically rejecting some nineteenth-century miracle accounts.223

As another scholar complains, Bultmann and others excluded miracles without standpoint, see Cadbury, "Intimations," 87 (why privilege as nonmythical only what is amenable to modern tastes and therefore considered theologically valuable)?

219. As Cladis, "Modernity," 93, notes, religion is "so familiar in society, so alien in the academy." Cf. the importance of religion in 96, 103; also the contrast between skeptical academia and popular belief regarding supernatural religion in Woodward, Miracles, 21.

220. The greatest influence on his thought is the early Heidegger (Perrin, Bultmann, 15; Hasel, Theology,

85), whom Bultmann thought discovered a modern view of experience compatible with the core experience

Bultmann thought he found in the nt ("Mythology," 23–25; Mark, "Myth," 135–36; Thiselton, Horizons,

178–79, 226, 232, 262; Brown, Miracles, 252; cf. Zachman, "Meaning," 14; Edwards, Christianity, 477). He saw existential understanding not as a bias but a necessary perspective, like any other approach to history

("Exegesis," 149; cf., e.g., Word, 11; in contrast to Thielicke, who warns about corruption of the Bible by secular philosophy, in Thiselton, Horizons, 3). Old liberalism (despite Bultmann, "Mythology," 12–13;

Poland, Criticism, 26–27, 29) and his logical extension of Lutheranism (Thiselton, Horizons, 205–26; cf.

Poland, Criticism, 19–20) also influenced him; for influences from earlier nt scholarship (D. F. Strauss,

J. Weiss, W. Bousset) and his approach to miracles as "mythology," see Twelftree, Miracle Worker, 33–37.

221. Thiselton, Horizons, 260–61; cf. Jaki, Miracles and Physics, 13.

222. This is not to deny the value of working assumptions, including that of naturalism; but such assumptions must be open to revision, not calcified in academic traditions. Scientific knowledge is provisional, hence on many points even consensus is temporary (cf. Clark, Philosophy of Science, 63–113).

Paradigm shifts do not come easily; even investigators tend to approach topics laden with traditional assumptions and concerns for respectability within the guild.

223. Kelsey, Healing, 236–37; cf. Kydd, Healing, 34; Moltmann, "Blessing," 149. Others criticize him for rejecting 1 Cor 15:3–8 (which demands belief in divine activity) as kerygmatic based on his existential assumptions (Richardson, Age of Science, 112); his supposedly different kerygmas for different communities flies in the face of the only concrete evidence we have (Hunter, Theology, 65n1). Even many of Bultmann's contemporaries believed his approach too radical (cf., e.g., McGinley, Form-Criticism, passim; Mark, "Myth,"

140; Kallas, Significance, 110–15; Hunter, Theology, 152–53).

Developing Hume's Skepticism toward Miracles

considering any of the strong concrete evidence for miracles; "Yet, if the hallmark of empirical science is impartial openness to evidence, such a way of proceeding can hardly be called scientific."224

In view of current trends, some postmodern observers may well come to accept claims of supernatural phenomena without moral judgments concerning their sources;225 for instance, neither the early Christian claim that Jesus's miracles are from God nor the contrary pagan claim that they were works of sorcery would be a priori privileged. Whether or not one approves of such cultural trends,226 the days when supernatural phenomena can be simply dismissed without discussion may well be numbered.227 Barring unforeseen shifts, this trend toward greater openness will probably continue and grow in light of the larger context of global thought

(addressed in chs. 7–9, 12). Philosophic approaches from the Majority World will bring to the table many interests, and, at least in most of Africa, Latin America, and much of Asia, the Western Enlightenment antipathy to suprahuman activity will not likely be among them.

Conclusion The traditional radical Enlightenment prejudice against miracles rested on philosophic premises regarding nature that have since broken down. Prejudice against the testimony of people with religious interests likewise reflected a specific

Enlightenment milieu and need not be maintained today. A merely intuitive rejection of supranatural claims thus rests not so much on an argument intelligible in our own cultural setting but on an older academic tradition—even though tradition is usually regarded as a nonempirical and nonrational foundation for epistemology. Contemporary approaches lack necessary grounds for a priori rejecting potential supernatural explanations, whether they are more open due to modern physics or multicultural postmodernism. Rejecting them from utilitarian fear of where they could lead also prejudices the discussion.228 An inflexible prejudice against the possibility of supranatural activity is no more neutral than a prior commitment to that possibility is. We return to such questions most prominently in chs. 13–15.

224. Nichols, "Miracles," 704.

225. For one objective anthropological investigation that takes something like this morally neutral approach, see, e.g., Goodman, Demons; for the value of distinguishing between what is paranormal and what is good, see, e.g., Allen, "Miracle" (although he appears to dislike supernatural healing).

226. Western Christians may learn from Asian Christians, for example, that what is at issue is not whether events are superhuman, but what spirits are behind them (Yung, Quest, 230, emphasizing discernment and citing Mark 13:22; Matt 7:22–23; 2 Thess 2:9).

227. Marsden, Outrageous Idea, 30, notes that an academy that welcomes postmodernists alongside empiricists is utterly inconsistent if it denies a voice to even overt Christian perspectives; see also McGreevy,

"Histories," 65.

228. A purely utilitarian approach might as well prefer Pascal's wager, which invites theistic belief if evidence is otherwise balanced.

Are Miracles Possible?

I myself have embraced both sides of this question at different times in my life—one side as an atheist and the other (now, for most of my life) as a Christian.

What I wish to show now is just how culturally isolated are the assumptions that dogmatic antisupernaturalism is incontrovertible and that it speaks for modern people as a whole. More important for the book's primary thesis, I wish to show how common are firsthand claims to what the claimants believe are miracles.

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