3: Hume 2: Reformulations of Hume

3

Hume 2: Reformulations of Hume

As discussed in the previous chapter, there has been widespread disagreement among scholars regarding how best to interpret the heart of David Hume’s argument in his famous essay “Of Miracles” ever since it first appeared in 1748. This has especially been the case in recent times. Before then, especially in the initial decades after its publication, friend and foe alike usually took a fairly similar position, what might be identified as the “traditional” position on the matter. Interestingly enough, throughout much interaction, including with Hume himself, he did not dispute this interpretation, even speaking positively of other scholars. Strictly speaking, this atmosphere perhaps did not arise to much more than an argument from silence, though the amicable comments of many may hint at a shared understanding here. The more or less traditional interpretation has been the one taken here. Since then, however, other interpretations have arisen.

Regardless of how Hume’s essay was interpreted in the past, this has not impeded a host of recent authors from developing their own arguments against miracles. Most frequently following in a Humean brand of the analytic philosophical tradition, these writers have developed a host of sometimes rather creative objections to the occurrence of these supernatural events.

However, it should not be assumed that every argument that juxtaposed miracles with the laws of nature was due only to Hume’s influence. Even before Hume’s essay, others, such as Benedict Spinoza and the English deists, made similar moves, from which it even appears in retrospect that Hume himself may have borrowed. After Hume, many scholars made comments to the effect that ignorance of nature’s laws accounted for much of the widespread belief in these miraculous events. To that extent, at least, Hume was not the first thinker to state some of these arguments, though he may be the best known among them.

It is not always clear what causes one particular work to be singled out for fame (or infamy) above other similar efforts. However, in Hume’s case, several factors probably converged, including aspects such as these: his amalgamation of major and minor arguments in a single place, his more forceful debate style compared to those of some other contemporaries, along with fitting his critique to Enlightenment times. But Hume’s reputation as perhaps the best known of the skeptical philosophers of his time certainly was another consideration in the acclaim that he received. This combination of factors probably accounted for the praise that Hume’s essay received above the others, making this essay far and away the best known and most referenced work on this subject by supporters and opponents alike. That this is even the case more than 250 years later is simply astounding.

Having viewed Hume’s essay in some detail in the previous chapter, the chief approach here will be to respond to many different objections to miracles categorically, grouping together similar complaints and working from more general to more specific replies. Within each classification, several different objections and nuances will be developed, many seemingly inspired by Hume’s previous efforts. As mentioned, most of these objections to miracles tend to be a priori in nature, though a few are a posteriori. Accordingly, most of the responses will also tend to be a priori, where the actual evidence or other specifics will seldom if ever be spelled out in this chapter, just as specifications of the criticisms were similarly not explicated. Rather, a general, a priori objection will most often engender a similar general, a priori response, including more than one potential comeback each in the process.

One last note of caution may be helpful here. Many readers may have been taught that a priori objections are illegitimate, so why are we presenting them here as serious queries? Actually, a priori rejections (before the facts) are often very poor responses. But a priori objections or questions that do not reject but only seek further clarification can actually be helpful, leading to progress in the exchange of ideas.

A Brief Word about New Atheist Approaches to Miracles

Some authors raise issues regarding the entire classification of miracles. Many of these objections tend to be quite general, though some do move on to more specific charges. This order of the categories is listed below. Many skeptical objections to miracles revolve around questions pertaining to the availability of sufficient evidence in order to establish the occurrence of these events. Frequent opposing claims in recent years, especially from among the so-called New Atheist authors, portray Christianity (and other religions too) rather naively as basically resting upon faith alone, bereft of any reason or evidence whatsoever, whereas atheism is viewed as almost a purely rational and scientific endeavor. These comments often seem to be made in a pejorative sense, almost as if it is hoped that repetitive comments to this effect will justify these claims and make them true, shaming believers in the process so that there may be no responses at all.

Seemingly indicative of their penchant for bombastic statements that are often quite far from correct, well-known New Atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris proclaims, “In fact, every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable.” Inconceivable or not, virtually all of these New Atheist authors are well aware of some of the arguments put forward in favor of God’s existence and, more specifically, for Christianity, including miracles.

There is some truth to these atheist accusations, given that a fair number of everyday Christians and even a fair number of pastors at least seem to favor the faith route. Still, probably the majority of trained Christian scholars, especially among evangelicals, as well as a large swath of other believers do not couch their claims in terms like this and are usually aware of a host of evidential considerations for Christianity as well as their opponent’s arguments, whether or not that is the path they choose to take.

But it is hardly fair to cite the easiest, simplest path of attacking other positions, whatever the views. After all, seemingly few atheists or other skeptics, including those just listed, would want their positions to be expressed, represented, or defended in terms of the so-called village atheist or the “lunatic fringes” of their own movements, such as with angry comments or letters to newspaper editors. The real issue, after all, is where the arguments and data lie, and that is precisely what we intend to pursue, in spite of where popular observations from nonscholars on either side may reside.

Reviewing Hume and the Initial State of the Evidence for Miracles

A few caveats will be mentioned at the outset. It often seems that these required levels of confirmation as set by critics are so high that they could never possibly be reached. It is as if, even in a case where a surprising number of positive considerations have already been provided, the adequate level is always just a little higher and out of reach. In short, the claim might even be meant to indicate that the evidence can never achieve a sufficient amount, so that a miraculous conclusion could never be reached. But it needs to be pointed out that greater evidence for miracle claims than for normal events does not mean it is impossible for the appropriate amount to ever be attained, for that amounts to an a priori rejection, as mentioned above.

We will not repeat from the last chapter each of the seven general responses directed toward Hume’s 1748 essay against miracles. But several of the critiques that were raised there will also be quite relevant at various places in this chapter, at least in edited or adapted form, as they apply to the many neo-Humean moves against belief in miracles that followed in Hume’s wake.

This chapter considers four categories of objections. The initial three consider primarily philosophical questions: (1) whether there is sufficient evidence for miracle claims; (2) if the characteristics of nature’s laws may in any way be adjusted in order to incorporate “supernatural events” as natural occurrences; and (3) if miracle claims can ever be identified as supernatural acts of God. The fourth category involves historical questions, primarily (4) whether there are any reasons of a historical nature as to why miracle claims should be questioned chiefly on a priori grounds. Again, these many issues have been raised by a host of recent commentators who often more or less follow Hume’s steps. We will note some of the many variations among these four total categories as well, along with several problems with each of these charges.

More than twenty different objections to miracle claims from all four categories will be entertained here, with almost all posed in an a priori manner. Theoretically, these protests raise issues that purport to present roadblocks to there ever being adequate evidence or other considerations in favor of miracles before the arguments are actually being presented. If these criticisms are later found to obtain, they could pose obstructions to the belief in supernatural events. Of course, good responses and evidences could later serve to move the situation in the opposite direction.

To repeat, since the objections are usually raised in an a priori manner, so the majority of the responses to the critics will be couched in that same jargon. In other words, neither critic nor defender will be trying to actually amass their data in this context. Just as the objections are raised only as potential roadblocks without data, the responses will be made in similar fashion. If the responses are found later to be stronger, they could pose sufficient rejoinders to those who deny the belief in the supernatural, helping to establish the positive case for religious belief and miracles in particular.

We will now survey a variety of more specific charges that skeptical scholars have aimed at religious beliefs in miracles, with each charge in the first category zeroing in on the question of there being sufficient evidence for the supernatural claims. An assortment of responses will be directed to each challenge, numbered consecutively throughout this category, all addressing a wide range of considerations and available evidence on behalf of miracle claims.

With these caveats in mind, it may be noticed that several of Hume’s criticisms of miracles will appear again here, sometimes in a straightforward manner and often being adjusted in a similar manner but from other angles. Many of the critiques of Hume and defenses of miracles from the previous chapter will be spread out here as well, sometimes being repeated while addressing slightly different objections. Note that the first two comebacks below are review items that were already raised in the previous chapter, while the last three present what might be thought of as extensions of the seven critiques of Hume’s essay.

Category 1: Is there enough evidence for miracles?

Challenge 1:1—Can a miracle occur if it is contrary to nature and its laws?

This initial critique is more general. Is there sufficient evidence to establish whether, contrary to some, there exists enough positive data on behalf of miracle claims to declare that these events have occurred in opposition to what is known of nature and its laws? Hume insisted that there is not enough unquestionable evidence favoring a miracle. After all, as often repeated by skeptics, more evidence is needed to establish miracles than to determine ordinary events.

Response 1

As mentioned in the previous chapter, perhaps most crucially, strong evidence directed to a very specific point in time could actually provide enough confirmation to conclude that, at that precise moment and none other, the normal course of nature may have been (or appeared to have been) temporarily set aside by a superior power. This or a similar critique has been raised many times since Hume first published his essay. But other skeptical scholars often make moves that do not allow for the possibility being described here.

It should also be recalled that the emphasis here was definitely not on either assuming or attempting to establish God’s existence, which is actually not even part of this discussion. Neither is any actual evidence for a miracle on display in this context (or any other such item) any more than the critic has to prove her points at this juncture. Again, this a priori response is directed to an a priori objection, neither of which has so far provided the actual arguments in favor of the position in question. Rather, the idea was that if such an intervention at that specific juncture were even possible, then Hume and other skeptics would need to be open to any potential evidence for such an option, which could only be ascertained by a careful investigation rather than by critical fiat.

The point of the response, then, is that the laws of nature could be uniform both before and after potential supernatural events. But evidence could indicate particular “hot spots” in history where another sort of occurrence altogether seems to have entered the natural order at that very moment, as indicated by the data.

This is what many theists are requesting here—that skeptics like Hume and others check out the possibilities by examining the evidence. For example, Dennis Jensen remarks that if the evidence is sufficient to indicate that particular events may have occurred, they ought not be rejected or sidestepped simply as “odd” occurrences. There could be enough evidence to vindicate a miracle claim at that juncture and make it the best explanation of the known data on that particular occasion.

Response 2

Another devastating critique of David Hume’s essay mentioned in the previous chapter is that of George Mavrodes and others. The manner in which Hume’s experiential argument for the laws of nature fails. His misguided attempt to rule out miracles begins with his misunderstanding of induction and his own lack of adequate sample size. Hume ascertained in the 1740s that “firm and unalterable experience has established these laws,” evidence he later termed as “uniform experience.” How did Hume arrive at this “firm,” “unalterable,” and “uniform” evidence for nature’s laws? If his experiential sample consisted of the views of his philosophical friends and perhaps a few others, or if they were simply generalized statements, then this sample was far too small to be accurately predictive.

But if the sample size had been greatly expanded to, say, at least hundreds of representative testimonies, then miracles would almost assuredly have been reported among these accounts as well, just as they are so recounted today. Either way, the very foundation for Hume’s essay fails, for it most likely rests on faulty experimental groundwork. Therefore, in addition to his circular argument, what Hume most likely does evidence in this essay is not a successful argument against miracles but just poor research techniques. In terms of informal logic, Hume’s thesis (or others that may be similar) presents an example of the fallacy of hasty generalization (more particularly, “insufficient or biased statistics”). In such a case, such a small study sample would have no probative force whatsoever in ruling out miracles.

Response 3

Moreover, as an extension of comments directed to Hume as well as to other skeptics who more or less agree with his general approach, these critiques are the sort that could potentially apply to almost anything—one can always demand more and more (and even more!) evidence. Yet, as German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg responded wisely to then-atheist philosopher Antony Flew, demanding additional evidence for a miracle claim assumes that what has already been provided has been addressed adequately! However, in such a situation, to continue rejecting an occurrence in the presence of what could be sufficient evidence without responding adequately to that evidence amounts to an a priori rejection of the miraculous. Granted, as already noted, this evidence has not been discussed yet in this chapter, but Pannenberg’s response may still be proposed as a preliminary caution that may become warranted by the data when they are given.

Response 4

Further, since historical facts are not self-interpreting, it would also be significant if additional evidences of other sorts were available in order to connect the resurrection to an interpretive system that best explains the resurrection and other related occurrences. For instance, if Jesus’s miracles and exorcisms were found to be consistent and integrated with his overall life, ethics, and other teachings, that would potentially also be significant in providing a worldview context for an occurrence such as his resurrection, as well as in contributing more structure and identification to the overall project. These as well as other additional considerations could serve as further evidential clues pointing beyond this natural world.

Response 5

Related to the previous consideration of interpretive systems, it should also be mentioned that if a surprising amount of evidence does obtain on behalf of a particular miracle claim, the opposite consideration also needs to be considered. In the case that the only chief opposition to the claim is that such events simply do not ever occur, the particular opposition worldview that asserts such a stance should also be prepared to defend why it is superior and why this particular belief should be allowed to “trump” the data simply by its assertion. The compelling reasons on behalf of the competing worldview that proposed such a dismissal are also on display. No mere assertion of a competing view should be allowed to simply dismiss the presentation of data.

We will now survey a variety of more specific charges that skeptical scholars have aimed at religious beliefs in miracles, with each one zeroing in on the question of there being sufficient evidence for the supernatural claims. An assortment of responses will be directed to each challenge, numbered consecutively throughout this category—all addressing a wide range of considerations and available evidence on behalf of miracle claims.

Challenge 1:2—Is There Empirical Evidence for Miracles?

The next evidential challenge to the belief in miracles can come from more than one related direction. After the initial discussion above, perhaps some critical scholars will understand that many believers think there are some strong and worthwhile considerations that can be brought to bear on the miracles discussion. But not satisfied with merely some decent evidence, the ante may be raised to require a particular species of evidence. Or perhaps another critical group altogether simply begins at this higher threshold of data.

In discussions of this sort, empirical data is often or even generally preferred. The idea is often that the scientific method, based on acquiring sense data as the preferred species of evidence-gathering, yields the premier brand of knowable data. Very strict forms of this challenge, such as those by Ayer’s positivism or other requirements for empirical evidence posed by scholars, are sometimes thought of as the only meaningful and hence admissible species of confirmation that could gain true knowledge concerning the world. While more general observations or comments of this nature are still heard frequently in one guise or another, there are serious flaws in these sorts of requirements.

Response 6

So, is there any possibility that empirical evidence exists for miracle claims? Actually, it was not long before a number of strong critiques sidelined Ayer’s stringent variety of skepticism, and it became a rather short-lived philosophical option. Ayer himself actually helped with the reconstruction of this view!

Philosopher David Elton Trueblood asserted one such prominent critique of Ayer’s requirement in a treatment entitled “The Self-Contradiction of Positivism.” In treating the logical positivist’s variety of this charge (which is perhaps the strongest of the major versions), Trueblood pointed out that the central decree that requires employing empirical data is a rule that cannot be empirically verified itself. Trueblood closes the matter rather succinctly. He states, “In the light of such analysis we have a right to conclude that logical positivism fails to undermine religious belief, because it undermines itself in the effort.” Trueblood concluded, “It must be a mere matter of taste, in which case we do not need to pay serious attention to it.”

In other words, Ayer’s regulation that required the necessity of producing positive empirical data for meaningful knowledge had strangely neglected to provide any such scientific backup on behalf of this original initial claim itself on the necessity of empirical data. In short, the rule that required empirical information had no empirical reason on its own behalf. Therefore, Ayer’s principle actually flunked its own test!

Just four years after the initial publication of A. J. Ayer’s popular volume Language, Truth, and Logic in 1936, another prominent philosopher, Edgar Sheffield Brightman, also critiqued his position in detail. Like Trueblood, he pointed out that positivism was “a very popular view at the present time.” Brightman offered a couple of criticisms, another of which was a common complaint, namely, that the same argument as employed by Ayer would also rule out our knowledge of history.

Years later, after many other scholars also noted these and other problems with the verification principle as well as with other items involved in the attendant skeptical reasoning, the demise of logical positivism ensued. Renowned philosopher Alvin Plantinga still took another swipe at Ayer’s principle by returning to the earlier criticism raised by Trueblood: “It seems impossible to state the so-called ‘verifiability criterion’ in a way which rules out theological and metaphysical statements without paying the same compliment to scientific and common-sense statements.”

Hence, there exists no reason for anyone to be obliged to follow the verification principle or its other strictures. There is no solid foundation on which this regulation can stand. In fact, nothing substantial backs up such a rule, hence there is absolutely no need to require the sort of empirical testing that it demands. It turns out to be merely an ungrounded or preferential assertion, and it has been recognized as such.

Moving forward to postmodern times, charges often still emerge regarding less strident claims that sense experience is the only admissible, justified sort of evidence or, at least, that it is the strongest variety of confirmation. For example, it is asserted commonly that empirical testing and its results are the very backbone of modern science and hence should be emulated. But these statements are similarly not effective at all. The stronger accusation that empirical truth is the only allowable path to affirming claims makes virtually the same error as with the harder verification principle above. On what grounds is this challenge grounded? How could it be shown that empirical evidence is the only way to know something, or the only means of establishing truth? Not even science itself makes this claim, and scientific truth is often decided on other grounds, not to mention that this claim rules out certain types of science altogether. The latter category would include the many philosophical aspects of modern physics, geology, and many of the biological sciences.

The weaker claim that empirical data is the best species of evidence does not even need to be challenged, for it may in fact be the case. But this is a far cry from making the first claim above, that it is the only admissible type of evidence. After all, the best football team in the league is certainly not the only team in the league, and so it is with empirical evidence as well.

Response 7

Further, even if believers accepted this skeptical challenge by using only or primarily empirical sources to confirm some of their claims, the discipline of history still meets that standard, at least in the sense employed by the social sciences. Thus, historical research would be admissible in the sense of relying on empirical research. In other words, historical data would be allowed similar to the way that psychological, sociological, or anthropological research might be utilized.

The value and force of this argument regarding the evidential use of historical research is even indicated by very skeptical, analytic philosophers themselves, who proposed these empirical tests in the first place as they freely employed these historical methods. The reasons for their lack of challenge on the rigors of history include not only the evidential aspects that these methods produced, but even the more practical truth that it is self-stultifying, if not self-contradictory, to reject history since scientific progress, for example, requires the knowledge of truthful historical precedent with its theories and experimentation. Hence, it is hardly surprising that quite skeptical analytic philosophers such as David Hume, Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Mackie, and Antony Flew, among others, have each provided examples of the acceptance of historical investigation in order to ascertain which events did or did not occur.

The same could be stated regarding skeptical historians, including the precursors to contemporary postmodern trends. None of these scholars deny that we can still gain knowable historical facts through investigation. The data we possess are sufficient to arrive at key events. Besides the philosophers just mentioned, many examples of skeptical historians could be cited here as well, including Wilhelm Dilthey, Benedito Croce, Ernst Troeltsch, R. G. Collingwood, Charles Beard, and Carl Becker. All of them also freely used methods of historical investigation in spite of their own skepticism.

Other skeptical thinkers could also be added to these lists, since the vast majority of even the more subjective-leaning idealistic historians agreed with this assessment regarding the knowledge of historical facts. In fact, Meyerhoff even helpfully comments that each of these skeptical researchers combined some version of “historicism” with their idealism. Earlier in volume 1 it was also observed that while even the major, contemporary postmodern historians may take different angles on these questions, they likewise do not deny the probable presence of particular ­historical facts.

Two other considerations will be mentioned briefly below.

Response 8

Those who reject the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection could further their positions by suggesting and defending a naturalistic alternative hypothesis contrary to the occurrence of this event, one that they consider capable of explaining all of the empirical data. But, strangely enough, comparatively few serious attempts have been produced in recent years, even from the best-established skeptical scholars, as we will see later in this volume.

Response 9

It is clearly the case that the Shroud of Turin could well turn out to be a counterfeit object of some unexplained variety. But even if this cloth is an actual archaeological artifact but simply not the burial cloth of Jesus, this sheet could still have wrapped the body of a crucified man, thereby providing some further repeatable, empirical evidence for at least the nature of death by crucifixion. But if this garment does turn out to be Jesus’s actual burial cloth, more specific data of an empirical (as well as repeatable) variety closer to the scientific research model would provide a very crucial addition to the already existing data pertaining to the specific death and even the resurrection of Jesus.

Challenge 1:3—Are Miracles Repeatable Events?

Another somewhat related line of questioning is to inquire whether evidence for miracle claims is repeatable as in the hard sciences. Yet, if these occurrences are un-repeatable, then how can they be interpreted?

Initially, two earlier responses need to be repeated from the discussion above. First, this and the next objection both address miracles in terms more related to the hard sciences. But as has been explained both above as well as in much detail in volume 1 of this study, history is a social science rather than a hard science. So, for starters, these two challenges are, strictly speaking, out of place, sort of like comparing apples to oranges. But these two subjects will still be addressed.

Second, as was likewise already explained, requiring empirical evidence as the only sine qua non test for miracle claims is a self-refuting move, since the requirement or rule itself fails to provide any empirical evidence on its own behalf. So how can the requirement of an empirical test simply trump the entire process when it fails to pass its own standard?

Similarly, the related charge to this initial empirical challenge is that miracles are not repeatable occurrences. However, to require repeatability as a test either for eventfulness or to provide an interpretation stumbles into the same problem. The rule itself that necessitates repeatability cannot be verified or otherwise shown to be necessary. Such a rule is hardly repeatable on its own grounds, and hence it fails miserably in its attempt to gain any compliance whatsoever on its own behalf. In other words, why should this requirement be allowed to set the pace for research when the very rule is nothing more than a command that is hanging out in unverified space? Where is the force behind a requirement that also flunks its own test? So, again, on what is this rule based?

Response 10

What rule determines additionally that unrepeatable events cannot be interpreted? Are historians unable to give an adequate interpretation of Julius Caesar’s victories over Gaul or to describe the tremendous importance of the British Magna Carta without repeating the original moments of each? Frankly, attaching this additional rider to the previous idea seems almost like a nonsequitous move, perhaps to make the objection appear to be more robust. Here is yet another requirement that turns out to be a mere assertion that also lacks repeatability or any other backup.

Further, individual skeptics as well as the dominant positions in scientific and other disciplines as a whole regularly allow significance for nonrepeated events. Hume admitted the possibility of onetime events, like total darkness. In fact, Flew thought that this was a weakness in Hume’s position. Recent science has no objection to nonrepeatable singularities such as the Big Bang or the origin of initial life itself. As just mentioned, historians have no problems arriving at meaningful interpretations of historical events in spite of a lack of repetition. Even though these examples are not miracles, they provide principles for recognizing the occurrence and meaning of onetime events.

Response 11

This objection sounds suspiciously like an a priori rejection of miracle claims, something along the lines of: “If this event is not repeatable, then it does not count. But if it is repeatable, then it is obviously just a natural occurrence.” By such reasoning, then, a miracle could be ruled out from the very outset, even before an investigation is conducted, regardless of whether or not it even happened!

Response 12

Even apart from repetition, we know enough about the laws of nature to explain that side of the equation. We likewise know what most likely would be an exception to these laws. As such, we may identify the potential miracle claim under such circumstances. If a particular event occurred, then it (obviously) happened. Not only can such an event not be ruled out simply because it is a one-time occurrence or otherwise unique, but uniqueness is often considered to be one possible sign of the miraculous in the first place.

Response 13

We will need to return to the details of this subject below, but it is at least both rele­vant and possible that well-documented miraculous events may indeed occur today, perhaps even in abundance. Further, they may even be repeatable, at least in the sense of very similar occurrences happening in diverse settings with different people. Further study may discover these significant features.

Additionally, whether the Shroud of Turin, mentioned earlier, is a nonmiraculous cloth that wrapped an unknown crucifixion victim—in which case much can still be learned about crucifixion—or it belonged to Jesus, it remains the most scientifically tested archaeological artifact in history. But in terms of this critique, virtually all of these tests are repeatable, thus also fulfilling the critique.

Challenge 1:4—Are Miracles Predictable Events?

Another challenge to the strength of the potential evidence for belief in miracles is this: if these occurrences followed nature’s laws, they should be predictable. But if miracles are unlawful and unpredictable, then they are inexplicable. But if they are inexplicable, then they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable.

This objection is beset by many complications to say the least. Two of the issues at the outset have already been raised above and will not be counted again. The first issue pertaining to this challenge is that it has not been shown that lawfulness in explanations or actions must obtain in the exact manner as stated by critics. But to identify or require predictability as a criterion that determines truth or meaning is itself without a basis. It remains yet another disguised requirement, such as those already seen above, that flunks its own criteria—it is a concocted rule without external support. Yet other propositions are supposed to comply to its make-believe rules.

Second, this proposed challenge once again makes an unwarranted prior assumption that all law is natural. This is simply yet another hardly disguised form of what has already been encountered elsewhere in this chapter as an a priori rejection of miracles. But if God has indeed acted in history, miracles will be supernatural by their very nature, as Hume even agreed in his famous definition of these occurrences.

Response 14

C. S. Lewis mentioned another relevant issue here. Miracles would be linked to God in their past history but then tied into the laws of nature in their forward direction once they happened. This skeptical objection would prefer to ignore all of this in an attempt to rule out these events simply by fiat. So, what, then, if miracles are not generally predictable and do not proceed according to natural law? That’s their very nature! Purtill notes that they would be free acts of God not unlike a presidential pardon.

Response 15

Also, this objection commits the “either-or” fallacy of informal logic (also known variously as the “false dilemma,” “black-white,” or “all or nothing” fallacies) and does so in multiple places too. In such misconceptions, the options in a situation are “erroneously reduced to two” when there are other possibilities.

Many examples of this “either-or” logical fallacy could be provided here from critics, such as the declarations made by one skeptical scholar after another that miracles are either lawful or unlawful, predictable or unpredictable, explicable or inexplicable, verifiable or unverifiable, including the further charge that we must investigate all of a miracle or none of it. But additional options are clearly available in each of these cases—hence the repeated logical fallacies. Therefore, since a miracle would be a supernatural occurrence due to our inability to investigate its originating direction with God, the observable direction may still be investigated. In other words, the effects of such actions in our world could be observed and often even measured.

In short, as supernatural events, miracles would not need to occur in the same ways that natural events happen. The prefix super should make it abundantly clear that something in addition to the “natural” portion would definitely be present here. That should be obvious, though these objections continually attempt to squeeze a square peg into a round hole.

Response 16

Major exceptions that appear to transgress this requirement of prediction are noted regularly in the world. Numerous examples are even available. Historical events are rarely predictable, but they still operate by natural laws and very few scholars disregard history. Are there such things as free choices? If so, are these actions always verifiable according to these strictures, or is freedom even related to verification in such a manner? Additionally, occurrences studied in modern physics are not always predictable. In fact, perhaps this applies to even a majority of the phenomena studied in physics. So, is this branch of science unknowable or unverifiable according to this same charge? If examples such as these from history and physics obtain without any apparent problems, why must miracle claims be any different? Or why must miracles measure up to a different standard?

Response 17

As with our earlier comment regarding empirical evidence in general, a Christian could always simply accept the criterion of predictability anyway, at least up to a certain point. Such a move could still help establish the case for Christian theism in spite of the lack of missing support on behalf of this criterion. To that end, if Jesus did indeed predict his resurrection beforehand, and if such is ascertainable by critical standards (as we argued in volume 1 and will do so again below), then the resurrection was both predictable and predicted. In such an instance, this criterion is still satisfied.

Challenge 1:5—Are the Scientifically Verifiable Laws of Nature Superior to Even Potential Historical Evidence on Behalf of Miracle Claims?

The chief idea here is that scientific data, as a type or species of evidence, is superior to historical evidence. After all, at least the hard sciences boast of repeatable claims along with stricter, more readily measurable criteria, which history cannot produce. In such cases, as per Hume’s analogy of one “proof” confronting another “proof,” when the experiential evidence favoring the laws of nature confronts the “proof” of historical testimony for miracle claims, the former is recognized as being the superior method. The argument is that the support for the laws of nature is sufficient to trump the weaker historical testimony. An additional angle on this sort of objection is sometimes referred to as the issue of “dwindling probabilities,” where historical arguments lose some force.

Two vital issues that were addressed in detail in the previous chapter on Hume’s essay on miracles as well as in the review at the outset of this chapter need to be revisited here briefly. First, it was argued that one of the crucial matters in this entire discussion is not at all the one regarding the general strength of the laws of nature, but whether there was a God who was stronger than those laws. Think of it this way: why should anyone care about the evidence for nature’s laws if there is a Creator God who is omnipotent and who chose to act in history? But rather than an ensuing discussion of God’s existence, the crux of this critique was to assert that if God even possibly existed, the data in favor of these possible events would at least need to be examined because that information could potentially trump other considerations.

According to what has been termed here as the “frame argument,” these laws of nature could be just as powerful as the critics assert and still be superseded by an even stronger power. Thus, rather than asking how strong or well established these laws are, the more telling issue is whether the entire system (or “frame”) can be temporarily superseded. Lewis said it this way: “No study of probabilities inside a given frame can ever tell us how probable it is that the frame itself can be violated.”

Here is the most crucial element of this countercritique: if a miracle actually occurred, it would actually be superior to these laws of nature, but only at that precise moment, and it would therefore take precedent over nature’s laws at that juncture. The laws of nature are often thought to describe what generally hold in normal circumstances. History can tell us if or when there was an apparent exception on a particular occasion. The available data on behalf of the miracle claim, then, could potentially indicate that the observed strength of nature’s laws had been superseded at that point.

The second matter is that even what may well be the strongest form of argumentation, as in the empirical sciences, is not thereby the only way to gain data. Solid facts as determined by physics cannot overrule or disprove historical events, such as Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, as long as there is no contradiction that has to be decided. In this chapter, contradictory claims are being treated one at a time. But to give another example here, the “frame argument” just referred to above is an indication of how an actual miracle could at least potentially coexist with the laws of nature, each within their own domains. Thus, the question expressed in challenge 1:5 is a bit of a non sequitur unless one is choosing between contradictions, which is not the case here.

Response 18

The notion that science by its very nature necessarily opposes miracles or that we are too modern to believe in these occurrences is a false dichotomy that must be abandoned. Famous comments such as those by German theologian Rudolf Bultmann may still be repeated: “It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.” The same applies to Bultmann’s lead comment on Jesus’s resurrection: “But what of the resurrection? Is it not a mythical event pure and simple? Obviously, it is not an event of past history.”

Inductive studies require probabilistic conclusions. Openness even to supernatural events, miracles included, is needed. Science can no longer be used as a club that rules out miracles in an a priori manner. Strictly speaking, science does not even answer the question of miracles. While science does not favor miracles, it does not forbid them either. So, we must beware of a priori dismissals of these or any events.

Response 19

The informal logical fallacy of division seems apparent in these objections here as well. In such cases, the fallacy occurs when a general law is applied to a specific case. Thus, whatever may be attributed generally to the sciences or to the individual sciences as a whole cannot necessarily be applied to separate topics or issues within these areas of study.

Response 20

While the resurrection argument indicates that miracles may be possible, additional worldview data can be introduced to show that the resurrection actually provides the best explanatory network into which to place the evidence for this event. Here event and interpretive structure could work together.

Challenge 1:6—Is There a Dilemma or Even a Contradiction between There Being Strong Laws in Nature While Needing Real Exceptions to Them in the Case of Miracles?

It is charged, especially by Flew, that those who believe in miracles have the problem of needing to accept both the powerful laws of nature as well as actual exceptions to them. Without the former, miracles could not even be recognized as exceptions, hence Hume defining these events with relation to these laws. So, it is sometimes contended that there seems to be a contradiction here.

Response 21

Proponents of miracles usually assert that there is no conflict whatsoever in having both adequate laws of nature along with real exceptions to them. There is no inherent problem here. As David and Randall Basinger point out, counterinstances are “perfectly compatible” with natural laws. Even as a nonmiraculous illustration, space shuttles need to overcome the law of gravity and do so by a superior force, yet the laws are still operating before, during, and afterward.

Response 22

Evidence for a nonrepeatable event may indicate that such an occurrence may be a real exception to a properly operating law. Some exceptional events may simply have adequate enough evidence to indicate that they occurred, and to deny this possi­bility would constitute an unwarranted rejection.

Response 23

As C. S. Lewis explained, even though the cause of a miracle would be the hand of God, once it occurred, it would immediately be tied into the natural order, behaving from that time onward according to the normal laws. In Lewis’s words, “Nature digests or assimilates this event with perfect ease.” So when the Gospels report that Jesus fed 5,000 people at once, seemingly with only some small loaves of bread and a very few fish, then everyone ate a normal meal as if a feast had just been prepared on the spot, no conflict exists here.

Response 24

This idea of a broken law would be more problematic with an outdated, Newtonian concept of natural law or something similar. However, the laws of nature are not unbreakable entities like some sort of crystal chalices that either impede or prevent events from happening. Rather, they may be viewed as statistical descriptions of what generally occurs.

Challenge 1:7—Do Miracles Violate the Principle of the Conservation of Energy?

For example, it is sometimes claimed that God’s acting in the system of nature would introduce additional energy into the system, but that such a prospect would change the amount of energy which, according to scientific principles, should remain constant. Many responses have been proposed to different aspects of the issue.

Response 25

One additional and thoughtful consideration is that miracles need not break or even impede the laws of nature at all. C. S. Lewis and Larmer provide the example of a female virgin having a fertilized egg implanted in her such that it leads to the birth of a baby nine months later, though she still remains a virgin. Likewise, God could do the implanting and never break one of his laws. A potential natural example could be a Voyager space flight that appears to break the law of gravity, an event that is easily explained by the exertion of greater thrust as it leaves the earth’s atmosphere, in a way like the frame objection mentioned above and elsewhere. But clearly, no natural law has been broken here, and in both instances nature carries on after the events. For Lewis, miracles may interfere with nature, but we should not think of them as breaking nature’s laws.

Response 26

If the conservation of energy knows no exceptions, how do scientists explain the Big Bang? What about the deaths of some stars and the birth of new ones, black holes, or other such examples, for that matter? At the very least, the metaphysical form of the principle would appear to be at odds with certain known traits of the universe, providing serious issues for this scientific configuration. It seems as if too little is known about some of these particulars in the universe to answer such specifics.

Response 27

For Fales and many others, the principle of conservation obtains in a closed universe. But for Al Plantinga and many other scholars, God acting in our time-space world, along with other indications, indicate that the universe is open. Hence there are more issues here that have to be addressed and detailed; miracles are far from a special concern.

Response 28

Larmer argues further that if there is strong evidence for miracles, then these data cannot be ruled out by the scientific, experimental evidence for the conservation of energy. Once again, this appears to be another apples-oranges application. Rather, it is the speculative metaphysical claims concerning this conservation principle that are the problem, even with the notion and the Big Bang itself. These are precisely the most difficult issues (as stated in response 26 immediately above), so the evidence for miracles will have to be disproven otherwise.

These more than two dozen responses were aimed at the first category of seven skeptical questions or objections to miracle claims, which were generally of the a priori sort. Each of these objections seemed to eventually pertain to whether or not there was adequate evidence in favor of the miracle claim. As explained at the outset, just as the criticisms are usually a priori, so are the responses. Therefore, very few evidential considerations were presented throughout either for the objections or for the miracle claims. Our focus so far, as in the rest of the chapter, has had to do with the conditions under which these occurrences may be impossible or possible.

Category 2: Questions concerning Accommodating Nature to a Miracle Claim

Continuing this same approach, the second of the four major categories mostly also consists of a priori objections to miracles. But rather than questioning the amount of evidence available on behalf of a potential miracle, as before, these challenges tend to ask whether a different configuration or view of nature’s laws would help in denying these miracle claims.

Challenge 2:1—Is there a difference between a miracle and a natural anomaly?

After all, strange things can and do happen. So the skeptical strategy in each of the cases might be to “expand” the definition of the affected laws of nature in order to simply incorporate and explain seemingly miraculous events as natural occurrences.

The chief idea behind these moves is apparently to note that since the totality of nature is not known, it is certainly possible that natural laws are more complicated than we previously thought, meaning that periodic expansions and reformulations of them are necessary. There are examples throughout history—such as the nature of eclipses during medieval times, tales of ice on lakes being explained in tropical areas where such had never been observed previously, and so on—where adjustments had to be made to our concepts of what is possible or impossible in nature. It is conceivable, even in modern times, that a different conception or angle on this or that law could place an event in an entirely new perspective. If nature’s laws are expanded, perhaps these strange events could be recategorized as quite natural occurrences. But as with other objections to miracles from the natural side, the appropriateness of such natural explanations has likewise also been challenged by the defenders of miracles.

Before beginning the responses, an earlier point needs to be reiterated here. This response attempts to avoid one of the most crucial issues of all, namely, whether events that have occurred in space and time have actually superseded the laws of nature altogether, due to a greater power being exerted. If this were discovered to be the best explanation here, no amount of expanding the laws would help to produce the proper or accurate interpretation.

Response 1

Perhaps more than with other critical responses entertained thus far, such a position certainly seems to be a textbook case not of an a priori objection but of an a priori rejection of miracles. The chief point here definitely seems to be that no matter how much evidence may be available on behalf of an event, the opponents have gone on record to interpret them in terms of natural occurrences if at all possible rather than to consider them as actual miracles.

Response 2

R. F. Holland charges that anomalies should not be considered the preferable explanations, even if the alternative is a miraculous occurrence. The evidence and explanation that best fit the situation at hand should be recognized and adopted. Holland argues that miracle claims can be investigated like other events.

Response 3

Swinburne helpfully suggests that miracles may exhibit certain characteristics that indicate when they could actually be true interferences with the laws of nature rather than simple anomalies to be somehow ignored. Such characteristics might include

(1) being nonrepeatable events

(2) being clearly counter to a known law of nature

(3) being of a nature such that no known expansion of a law can explain the event naturally

Response 4

As an extended example of the previous point (especially characteristic 3 listed above), what can be concluded concerning nature’s laws with regard to the resurrection of Jesus? How would this move, as described above, help the critic’s efforts? Would the new, enlarged and expanded natural law hypothesize that dead men always stay dead, unless their name is Jesus? The point here is that if Jesus were indeed the only founder of a major world religion who is believed by his own followers to have been raised literally from the dead, and the relevant evidence for this event is impressive, can the new law regarding death be specifically crafted for his case alone? It would seem that virtually no one would think so! Continuing the a priori avoidance, some other path would clearly need to be taken by the critics in order to avoid this entire matter of Jesus’s resurrection. It seems fair to say that this event alone would disprove this natural response. So, the critic is seemingly either pushed back to choose a viable naturalistic thesis or compelled to simply forget this second category altogether.

Response 5

Since it was argued in volume 1 of this study that historical events are not self-­interpreting, it follows that additional worldview considerations are necessary to further identify the resurrection as a miracle performed by God in the context of the historical Jesus’s life, death, and afterward. Such a worldview context could potentially provide the final indication that this event was not explainable as a freak occurrence or by expanding nature’s laws. This is precisely because this move would indicate that the resurrection stood beyond the pale of nature itself due to its theistic context, as argued in volume 4 of this study.

Challenge 2:2—Can an event in nature be anything other than a natural event? 

This objection almost seems as if it is characterized by some sort of play on words. However, McKinnon apparently interprets the criticism in the strong sense of showing that true miracles are contradictory concepts. Since the laws of nature are descriptions of the way reality usually behaves rather than barriers to be transgressed, there are no such things as exceptions to them.

A couple of additional issues are also applicable to this criticism that will not be numbered here since they were already utilized earlier within this second category of challenges. For example, Swinburne’s characteristics of miracles (nonrepeatability, being counter to the laws of nature, along with the absence of a coherent explanation even if nature’s laws were expanded) can still provide several important indications that an event is an actual counteroccurrence to nature. Further, in McKinnon’s attempted reduction of the options here to just two, this objection appears to be another example of the “either-or” or “false dilemma” fallacy of informal logic already mentioned above, since there are certainly more than just these two alternatives.

Response 6

Again, this position appears to have almost every earmark both of an a priori rejection of miracles as well as a circular argument that miracles never occur, for it seems to rule them out before the discussion ever gets started, regardless of the characteristics of the events in question. As Richard Purtill complains in his own critique, McKinnon tries “to cut off an interesting argument by definition.”

Response 7

For our purposes, of course, miracles must occur in nature if they are to happen at all. But simply because miracles may occur in nature, this would not somehow automatically baptize these events as normal, everyday circumstances. So this approach fails to answer the overarching causal question regarding the possible origins of Jesus’s resurrection, which could still have come from God’s hand and which nature could by no means produce. But as with recent arguments that favor signs of Intelligent Design, it will be argued later that Jesus’s resurrection actually does manifest those sorts of otherworldly pointers.

Response 8

This question has only been pointed to hypothetically so far, but if this is a theistic universe, that would appear to be quite a strong prospective indication by itself that such a being could potentially produce miracles and has actually done so. Again, this is only a hypothetical a priori response, as are the vast majority of the critical questions, but it might be that if God exists, the resurrection would seem to be exactly the sort of event that only God could cause and would actually even require God’s attributes. Actually, the existence of God plus the resurrection just might attract like magnets! But as has been mentioned throughout, no evidence is being produced by either side at this juncture.

Challenge 2:3—What if science discovers a naturalistic explanation in the future? 

It is often pointed out that the hallmark of science is discovery, including finding new explanations for previously unexplained phenomena. Tightening the point even further, David and Randall Basinger even prefer to include the words “permanently inexplicable” as part of their preferred definition and treatment of miracle. Several counterpoints have been raised in response.

Response 9

Many or even most theories could be answered this way, including the theories of Galileo or Einstein. Granted, it is always possible that future scientific discoveries could definitely upset the scientific scene in a variety of ways. After all, it has happened frequently in the past. Yet that is not a sufficient reason to hold back from proclaiming something to be the case in the present, at least until that time. Without this ability to teach the current state of the data at present, human information would basically have to be continually couched in repeated, never-ending nuances, with expressions of the state of knowledge basically being held hostage. But we cannot simply suspend judgment on a majority of events and issues until adequate evidence is available upon which an informed decision may be made. For example, scientists did not fail to proclaim Newton’s or Einstein’s theses because they could be mistaken in the future.

Response 10

As Holland remarks, science regularly breaks new ground and will definitely add to our knowledge in many subjects. But it is a confusion to conclude that science regularly contradicts its well-established truths.

Response 11

Swinburne makes the excellent point that even miracle claims are corrigible anyway, as is all scientific knowledge. It is all subject to future investigation. So what keeps us from making the very best, probable decisions known to us at this present time? Besides, if a critical scholar issued a rejoinder sometime in the future, Christian scholars would be quick to respond to it anyway. Thus, it is very difficult to feel any force behind this objection, including Basinger’s rider regarding permanent inexplicability. Believers would simply be doing what scholars in all of the inductive disciplines have done all along—do the best research possible and respond if and when new challenges occur.

Response 12

Some events (such as Jesus’s resurrection) would seemingly never occur naturally, as far as we know. While there have been obvious surprises through history, to assert the opposite in this case is to rely on tremendous improbabilities. Few laws of nature seem more secure than the fact that fully dead men do not rise. As was observed in the initial volume of this study, this event (1) is accompanied by very good evidence, (2) is without viable counterhypotheses (see also this volume), (3) has been well established for centuries, and (4) is also backed by strong worldview considerations.

As we have already noted several times, worldview data provide an additional, excellent, and necessary framework for predominantly historical arguments. In other words, they fit together well. In sum, the overall case for the resurrection is best seen as being a supernatural event with further considerations in its favor, completing the overall case.

A dozen different responses were directed at the three generally a priori challenges related to the second category of skeptical rejections of miracle claims, namely, to charges that the laws of nature themselves might somehow be adjusted or viewed differently in order to allow the status of seemingly miraculous events to instead be viewed as perhaps somewhat special but still natural occurrences. Each of these objections pertained to whether or not the miracle claim could be stated in terms that were unaffected by the suggestions concerning the laws of nature.

The third and final philosophical category of challenges to the belief in miraculous occurrences is that there are no distinguishing markers on these events that identify their origin. In many ways, some of those in this group are the toughest questions of all. We are not so much concerned in this grouping with the actual evidence on behalf of miracles or with their relation to the laws of nature. Rather, the major focal point of these issues has to do with various worldview and epistemic aspects related to miracle claims. Since historical events need interpretive paradigms, as we have mentioned many times, some of these challenges inquire regarding what sorts of adjustments might have to be made in light of the search for a meaningful worldview structure for these events.

Category 3: Identifying an Event as an Act of God

Some scholars have considered this species of objection as perhaps the chief angle for theists to address. The main idea is that, even if a true miracle really occurred, it could never be known for sure that it was an event that was actually performed by God. Or again, how is God’s potential activity in the world to be discovered? Several varieties of this objection will be considered here.

Challenge 3:1—How can any event ever be identified as an actual miracle?

Even if a true miracle really occurred, it could never be known for sure that it was an event that was actually performed by God. We do not possess the requisite tools to recognize, measure, or identify the presence of a divine cause, even if a miracle was directly in front of us and it (metaphorically of course!) hit us right between the eyes. In the words of Flew, “The crunch comes over the problem of identification.” Think of it this way: there are no such things as identification labels stuck on events that read, “Performed by God” or “Made in Heaven.”

This objection does raise some tough and thoughtful questions. Another way to look at the “freak event of nature” objection in the previous category is this: unless we knew for sure that a divine author performed a particular event, what knowledge would allow us to assert that God did it, or that it was part of a particular heavenly plan? Somehow, we have to have a clear argument that connects the event to the hand of God—a sort of bridge between the occurrence and its cause. Many scholars have suggested a host of ways to engineer such a connecting path.

Response 1

Some scholars have attempted to construct evidential routes across the bridge. Various examples include Holland’s suggestion that by studying the data as best we can, we may judge a miracle claim by the same criteria used in ascertaining the facticity of other historical events. Geisler argues first from the existence of God to the reality of actual miracles performed by God. Dietl proposes utilizing randomizing processes and predictions to recognize present-day miracles.

Response 2

Other scholars have tried to build larger worldview connections across the bridge between miracle claims and the overall landscape. Even Basinger admits that a miracle may be identified as “probable” if it fulfills a “divine action pattern.” He then provides details as to what this might look like, though the conclusion is not epistemically certain. Jensen emphasizes Jesus’s predictions of his resurrection mixed with others of his special claims. John W. Montgomery, Grace Jantzen, Douglas Erlandson, and Tan Tei Wei also suggest paths regarding linking miracle claims to a worldview scenario.

Response 3

This project argues for the usefulness of both of these initial avenues. The first approach argues from God to the resurrection as a divine event since the occurrence actually requires God’s attributes (termed the prospective argument). The second route combines a number of Jesus’s claims and actions with his resurrection for further validation of his teachings, pointing back to the originating cause of this monumental event with God (termed the retrospective argument). It is argued that both of these bridges independently categorize the resurrection as an event performed by God, thus allowing for its identification as an actual miracle. In many places in these four volumes, I argue for portions of this twofold approach, with the chief and most detailed treatment coming in volume 4.

Challenge 3:2—Isn’t it circular to use the Bible to establish a miracle?

Believers cannot argue circularly from Scripture to indicate that Jesus’s mira­cles occurred, and then use those miracles to argue back that Scripture is God’s revelation. As has been remarked often, other criteria are necessary to break this circular argument and judge when a miracle has occurred.

Flew thinks it is too frequently forgotten or even “ignored almost universally” that the second half of Hume’s essay is particularly aimed at the charge that “a mira­cle can never be proved, so as to be the foundation of a system of religion.” It might also be added here that this concern often raised by Flew has been addressed elsewhere. Actually, Flew’s critique here is freely acknowledged and admitted in some fashion by many if not most Christian philosophers and theologians. It is strange, however, that the particulars of this concern are almost never spelled out or detailed in these critiques beyond the comment itself. Of which specific transgressions are Christian arguments guilty?

Response 4

Independent arguments for the general reliability or trustworthiness of the Gospel texts, as well as more specific and perhaps even stronger approaches consisting of many defenses of specific, critically ascertained passages that may be used in building one’s case, could break the circular nature of this argument and provide a stronger basis for using at least these individual texts to address the miracle accounts mentioned in them.

Response 5

The minimal facts approach primarily used in these volumes seeks to establish the resurrection of Jesus or other truths totally apart from the inspiration or even the reliability of Scripture, building upon a lesser number of well-established and almost unanimously accepted historical facts. By this argument, even an unreliable New Testament text would not impede a decisive argument that could ascertain the occurrence of the resurrection or other key events.

Response 6

We have said and will continue to say often that the presence of broader worldview concerns beyond the empirical data itself also provides additional criteria for identifying certain events, such as Jesus’s resurrection, as a miracle and moves beyond this conclusion to provide a grounding for Jesus’s Christian theism as well. This challenge remains an a priori concern, so only this initial response has been provided. It will be dealt with at great length in later chapters. But for now, these responses seem more than sufficient to address the willingness to answer the concerns of Hume, Flew, and any others who share it, as well as to indicate directions that may be pursued.

Response 7

If some of the modern miracle claims are established among the dozens that are cited with confirmation, such a case would strengthen significantly the Christian theistic position. Further, such would be done totally apart from discussions over circular arguments concerning the use of the New Testament.

Challenge 3:3—Do the alleged miracles in other religions cancel one another?

Various religions and philosophical perspectives also claim their own miracles. These events would then presumably conflict with each other, even as the various teachings behind the events likewise conflict with one another. In this manner, the different traditions cancel out the others.

As Flew describes it, “[Hume] is urging that against any evidence for a miracle in any one religion must be offset all evidence for all miracles alleged in support of all the rest.” However, slightly later, Flew adds a conditional caveat that these conflicts must occur under the right conditions: “For the fact, if it be a fact, that all religious systems are both mutually incompatible and committed to denying the occurrence of any miracles under auspices other than their own,” it must be the case that they are truly contrary to each other, for it is at least possible that miracles in different systems could still be both recognized and accepted.

Response 8

This objection was responded to at length in the prior chapter but will still be addressed here. This entire objection is severely misplaced for a variety of reasons. If scholars are correct that no other religions have credible evidence for their own miracle claims, especially in the form of both early and eyewitness testimony, then there is nothing with which to oppose the potential evidence for any Christian miracle claims. The latter, on the other hand, are both well evidenced and exceptionally early. For apart from reliable evidence for other religious miracles, there are only the mere claims themselves. If this is the case, then the lack of evidence for alternative miracle claims in other religions is hardly on the same footing as Christian miracle claims if the latter claims are evidenced, and so the former cannot truly oppose the latter on these grounds. After all, unsupported or poorly evidenced “miracles” cannot rule out the possibility of any verified or actual miracle claims, should these be the case.

Flew even appears to agree here. Continuing soon after his two quotations cited in the previous footnote, Flew explains that Hume’s fourth subpoint assumes and even requires that there be “strong evidence for miracles under the auspices of at least two incompatible systems of revelation” and possibly even three such evidenced examples. Otherwise, there is no “clash” between the events in question and the critique fails to materialize.

For example, ancient historian Edwin Yamauchi asserts that there are no rival non-Christian miracle claims that are early, non-legendary, reported in ancient sources, and attributed to the founders of other major religions or philosophies. Only Christianity includes this sort of data. If Yamauchi’s comment is correct, Christianity would have a huge head start here. Since historical evidence is almost always crucial to make a case for miracles, those belief systems that deny, disregard, or downplay history would certainly seem to be at a mighty disadvantage on this subject. But this neglect of historical matters is what we find even from non-Christian and skeptical commentators. As stated so often, it is a matter of the evidence. But in historical terms, Christianity would seem to have no rivals here.

Especially in a comparative context, the use of evidence on more than one front is necessary. As eminent world religions expert Geoffrey Parrinder points out, “Whether a religion is true or false could, at best, only be decided after full study of all its doctrines and practices, and not by dogmatic assertion without examination. By this standard many theologians have failed in their duty to examine the evidence.” This is an approach that also will be treated in a later volume of this study.

Response 9

For the purposes of this critique, consider only the unevidenced religious views. As far as Hume’s notion that the various teachings of different religions oppose each other, even in a case where there exists no strong evidence on behalf of any of the particular religious belief systems, Hume’s critique still hardly applies. So if there are only different, ungrounded views clamoring for the spotlight, then this situation is definitely moot, as Parrinder notes. If the views under consideration are all equally fideistic, then such teachings are unable to “cancel” the truth of any other beliefs. But to reinsert response 8 here, if only a single religious system’s miracles are backed by strong evidence while all the others are not, those holding to the latter unevidenced belief systems cannot protest, for they have no support for their doctrines or claims.

Response 10

Further, since historical events as a whole (including any potential miracle claims) are not self-interpreting, which miracles are linked more closely to worldview factors and other propositional claims? No other religion exceeds Christianity in this regard either. For some examples, Jensen asks which miracle claims evidence greater ­power. Jensen also proposes a moral test: Are evil or immoral ends claimed to be the purpose behind the events in question? Or does another option fit the data more closely? Purtill points out that actual miracles in other belief systems can actually be compatible with the Christian message, such as still being caused by God (or other powers) and fulfilling God’s own purposes. Hence, from this angle as well, there is once again no necessary reason why such events and teachings must be opposed to each other.

Challenge 3:4—Can a single miracle establish a religious worldview?

Historical evidence alone for the miracle claim is too ambiguous—we need an interpre­tive system to accompany the event. Since miracles have never been shown to be probable, among other issues such as the ones pointed out in this chapter, they cannot establish a system of religion.

Response 11

We have already seen that this charge is also fully and widely admitted by Christian apologists. While Hume and Flew think that Christian scholars have not established the necessary arguments here, Christian scholars would object strongly to those assertions. To that end, different Christian researchers have proposed a variety of ways to anchor a miracle claim to just such an interpretive system. Swinburne and Geisler are two of the many who offer specific examples. So nothing remains here except to develop just such a system, including the appropriate connections to the events in question. Amazingly, Flew apparently even admits more than once that if the theists can actually establish their claims here, then they could potentially ground and authenticate their revelatory system.

Challenge 3:5—Isn’t any naturalistic theory more likely than a miracle?

Some scholars say that any fact is more likely than a miracle. On this view, a naturalistic alternative theory is always more likely than a miraculous event such as Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.

Beginning with a couple of briefly stated though unnumbered repeat critiques, this objection surely appears to be a very thinly disguised a priori denial, whereby certain events are rejected without having their day in court. On this view, there is no need to study or even view the issue of the resurrection because the conclusion has been prejudged. That any natural theory, no matter how poor, is held to be more likely than the resurrection shows the degree and depth of this a priori rejection. It is naturalism that is additionally judged (and assumed) to be true here while theism is scoffed at, often also a priori, and this in spite of naturalism’s severe lack of any positive arguments capable of indicating that it is true, along with many other signs to the contrary.

Moreover, the frequently stated criticism already mentioned several times by a few commentators is that this naturalistic outlook at least needs to entertain the possibility that God could have acted in history by a superior authority since at that precise moment or moments that power may have been greater than nature’s laws. This consideration almost by itself could change the discussion.

Response 12

It was mentioned earlier that critical scholars could always choose the naturalistic hypothesis that best supports their views. However, the alternative theses that have been proposed are usually so unlikely that scholarly critics will often refuse to choose one, even in a debate. Perhaps the desire is not to be “locked in a corner” by the refutations, including the idea that another thesis should have been chosen instead. These examples may reveal something crucial.

But critics may retort that, as bad as a particular naturalistic option may be, even the worst one is more likely to have occurred than a miracle, which is far less likely still—once again assuming naturalism. This chapter contains many retorts and several different lines of reasoning for each of the potential theses. Plus, it will be argued in later chapters of this volume that there is much evidence to be brought into the discussion to back up the resurrection, such as worthwhile arguments for God’s existence; additional data from Jesus’s personal ethics; the fact that even critical New Testament scholars almost always recognize that Jesus was a healer (see volume 1); the fact that Jesus most likely predicted his death, resurrection, and exaltation ahead of time; and contemporary medically documented miracle claims and near-death experiences, among others. God’s actions could be shown to be the more likely cause at this point. Most of these topics are discussed throughout this study.

Challenge 3:6—How would a miracle worker be identified?

Given the necessary connection between a potentially miraculous event and the need for an accompanying interpretive system or worldview, should anyone who comes along and claims to perform a miracle or some odd, inexplicable event, and then also claims to be God, deserve to be called divine and perhaps even be worshiped?

Response 13

Perhaps surprising to some, Jewish and Christian teachings do not deny the reality of similar scenarios (of course, minus the worship and claims to be God). There are many warnings throughout the Old and New Testaments to expect miracles, prophe­cies, exorcisms, or other strange phenomena produced by both believers and un-believers, including some who would falsely claim to be the Messiah.

The false prophets and teachers were to be distinguished from the true ones by whether the messages of the former agreed with those of the latter who had preceded them (Deut 13:1–5) or if they agreed with Jesus himself (Matt 24:4–5, 11). There was also an empirical test to administer as to whether the prophecies of the former really occurred as they had been predicted (Deut 18:20–22).

Other possible options also exist. These supernatural manifestations could consist of genuine acts of God among unbelievers, or they might be occultic, magical, or other counterfeit manifestations meant to deceive. These phenomena are reported in Scripture, including the episodes involving Abimelech, the Egyptian magicians before Moses, Balaam, Naaman, the witch of Endor, Nebuchadnezzar, Simon the sorcerer, and the unnamed slave girl who followed Paul and Barnabas. Strong and specific warnings are also issued against getting involved with supernatural teachings and phenomena that are not of God. But there is no need for Christians to think that they need to always deny these phenomena.

Response 14

It must be clarified that the subject here is that of someone performing one or more seemingly miraculous events rather than simply producing some interesting phenomena perhaps more likely in the category of magic, illusion, or anything else that appears to be initially unexplainable. These are much easier comparisons and should not count in the manner described in the challenge above.

Response 15

Does the person in question also make actual, serious claims to be God or divine? Without this second condition, there are definitely no grounds for a divine identification or for worship. Parallels to these direct claims to deity are much less plentiful in the historical religions.

Response 16

If these events in question can be repeated under certain circumstances, the more appropriate response, as mentioned above, would be to count them as natural events. For instance, ESP (extrasensory perception) or bending spoons by touch has been duplicated. Researcher D. Scott Rogo contends that there are major differences between true miracles and phenomena like ESP, mind-over-matter tests, and so on, which can be repeated regularly. As Swinburne notes, “But if we have good reason to believe that . . . similar events would occur in similar circumstances, then undoubtedly we have good reason to believe that the formulae which we previously believed to be the laws of nature were not in fact such laws.”

Response 17

Misses or mistakes such as incorrect prophecies, faked healings, or other similar phenomena would also count very heavily against these actions as well as the corresponding claims being made (see Deut 18:20–22). For example, it was reported that a survey of three popular astrologers indicated that the best score achieved among them was getting just twelve predictions correct in thirty attempts! The lowest score was only four hits out of thirty attempts! Another article reported that one of the very best-known astrologers in the world was incorrect about 35 percent of the time. This is highly relevant information with regard to this question.

Response 18

Other helpful tests may also be applied in these cases. Jensen makes a number of very pertinent and helpful suggestions: often, overall “fitness” is lacking in these alternative accounts, a term that typically applies to the coherence of the scenario. For example, even if something noteworthy is more or less on record for an individual, perhaps the person fails in other regards, such as by exhibiting moral lapses. Moreover, these accounts are often not backed or accompanied by well-expressed or well-developed worldview systems.

Another issue might pertain to which miracle claims actually exhibit a greater power, as in the Old Testament cases of the prophets of Baal being trumped by Elijah or the inability of Pharaoh’s magicians to compete with Moses. Even beyond inquiring as to the greater power, what sort of power is being manifest? Or perhaps a moral test is applicable to these cases? In such circumstances, the question might be what a miracle or prophecy is supposed to signify or point toward. Does it lead to ungodly scenarios such as killing those who disagree with the message, like the apocalyptic vision in Rev 13:1–15 where miraculous signs are followed by the murder of all who refuse to worship the person?

Response 19

If every one of the pertinent conditions obtained, then the entire situation would have to be reclarified and reevaluated much more carefully. But as the issue stands here, the original challenge is far too hypothetical. Is there even a single, clear candi­date for this combination of necessary and crucial traits? If so, where are these straightforward cases that have actually happened, as far as has been ascertained, rather than merely supposed?

Response 20

As we have already noted, the Christian message is accompanied and surrounded by the most sophisticated worldview scenario of all the world’s religious messages. It will be argued in this study that Jesus’s resurrection (complete with a new body) is the most unique and nonreplicable miracle in human history, and that Jesus’s claims are also utterly unique. This combination of an entirely unique event, along with an equally unique accompanying message, plus the accompanying worldview, is not found anywhere else among the world’s religions and philosophies. In fact, nothing even comes close to it. If we are right, the result will be that Jesus’s theistic worldview will be validated.

Challenge 3:6—Why not prefer an alternative, “natural miracle” such as mass hallucinations rather than an actual time-space resurrection from the dead?

As Wykstra states, “natural miracles” are always more likely to occur than the literal actions of God in history. To this critical response, an excited believer might proclaim triumphantly, “But there’s no such thing as mass hallucinations!” But the astute skeptic who may have been waiting for just such a retort might respond, “Perhaps so, my friend, but real resurrections do not occur either!”

Response 21

This proposal appears to conceal a strong a priori dismissal, prejudice, or rejection of the miraculous. But there are additional notes here beyond other mentions of this critique elsewhere in this chapter. In the head-to-head comparison above, if a mass hallucination is always preferred, then a true miracle would probably never be entertained or admitted under any circumstances, since some similar option could always be proposed, hence the prejudice. In these discussions, miracles are always the very last option, and perhaps that should be so. But the point is that this critique assumes the truth of naturalism or a similar view. But as has been countered here, this suppo­sition is far from established, especially in today’s world of highly evidenced near-death experiences, for just one example.

Response 22

Alternative, “natural miracles” are always the more likely option for anyone who assumes that naturalism is the proper worldview, as just noted. But if the God of Christian theism exists, the possibility of miracles would receive a huge “boost.” In the latter case, miracles would not necessarily be rare at all—they might have occurred thousands of times throughout world history. As Flew even admits, given some key beliefs about God, “the occurrence of the resurrection does become enormously more likely.”

Thus, it needs to be determined which worldview is ultimately correct. Why do naturalists—who frequently just assume via their viewpoint that virtually any event is more likely than a miracle, as this challenge definitely does—not begin by first establishing their own naturalistic worldview? For a position that so often goes on the offensive against religious views, naturalists should also be challenged to supply well-evidenced reasons that establish their own perspective!

Response 23

Onetime natural miracles are one thing. However, repeated natural miracles, especially when each of the scenarios so strongly sidesteps the known data, are much less likely. A couple of examples may be helpful.

For starters, group hallucinations of any sort are opposed strongly by the psychological, medical, and other relevant evidence against such hypotheses, such as these phenomena never being clearly observed in the professional literature. In the case of Jesus’s disciples, further data militating against such hallucinations would include that these experiences occurred too many times before too many persons at distinctly different places and times. Additional evidence that favors the empty tomb is the failure to account for the disciples’ lifelong transformations in the cases where that information is available, such as Saul the persecutor’s “hallucination” and James the unbelieving brother of Jesus’s “hallucination” when neither one desired to observe the risen Jesus, along with many other issues.

All these many issues aside, perhaps the largest problem for the “natural miracle mass hallucination hypothesis” is that these group hallucinations would have to re-occur continually, every single time that Jesus appeared to a group of people. Even though such events have arguably never occurred before or since, they would have happened several times here in just a very short time span. Thus there is a giant conundrum here, something like this: “Perhaps the only time that mass halluci­nations have ever occurred in history, as far as is known, they apparently occurred to the followers of Jesus, who just happened to be the most unique person who has ever lived! And in Jesus’s case, these events occurred repeatedly!”

This sounds less like a natural miracle and more like a literal miracle! Rather than a natural miracle group hallucination hypothesis, this thesis is more like a natural miracle group hallucination, natural miracle group hallucination, natural miracle group hallucination (and so on) hypothesis! Whether a string of several one-of-a-kind natural hallucination miracles is rarer and more difficult to achieve than an actual resurrection would probably be answered differently according to the personal worldview issues raised above. But this indicates just some of the difficulties in applying this particular “natural miracle” to Jesus.

Second, consider the theory that Jesus’s disciples stole his dead body out of the tomb and then lied about Jesus’s appearances to them. Once again, several strands of strong evidence exist against such a natural hypothesis even in just the cases that we know about, such as liars hardly being likely to become willing martyrs. It is even quite possible that, like the group hallucinations, this scenario has perhaps never been observed before. Plus the disciples’ extreme lifelong transformations; Paul the persecutor’s conversion, which was totally removed from the disciples’ cases, as was James the probable unbeliever’s conversion; the lack of any records of disciples who recanted later; and so on, all make this an extremely unlikely situation.

Again, however, as with the mass hallucinations, the major problems with the “natural miracle stolen body hypothesis” emerge at the weakest points of the thesis. The disciples living their lives and being utterly transformed by their very obvious lie that Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared later (the most difficult item in this thesis) would have to be repeated countless times. Basically, every time one of the perpetrators proclaimed the resurrection, which they knew to be faked, especially in the face of the perceived or actual threat of death, this hypothesis would have to be invoked. Thus, there would be many dozens of occasions for the view to go awry for the individual disciples. Like the previous example, we end up with something like this: “Perhaps the only time in history that we know a case where individuals willingly died for what they absolutely knew to be false, it happened to the disciples who had studied with Jesus, who was perhaps the most unique person who ever lived. Further, in this case, it happened very frequently—over and over again!”

Similarly, this is not so much a “stolen body followed by a huge lie in the face of certain and imminent death hypothesis” so much as it is “a stolen body followed by a huge lie in the face of certain and imminent death hypothesis, a stolen body followed by another huge lie in the face of certain and imminent death hypothesis, a stolen body followed by a huge lie in the face of certain and imminent death hypothesis, and so on,” multiplied perhaps dozens and dozens of times. Yet again, this is so much more than a “natural miracle”! As before, different worldviews will differently assess each scenario as more or less likely, such as whether dozens or more of these natural examples are more miraculous than the actual resurrection itself.

The chief point regarding both examples mentioned here is that it is not a single group hallucination or a single case of a lying group versus an actual resurrection. It is a case of multiple natural events, none of which has perhaps ever been observed even once before, versus one real miracle. In the case of the previous “lying and dying” thesis, it may even be hundreds of natural cases to one miracle. As mentioned earlier, and as will be a separate argument below, when we consider the hundreds of evidenced near-death experiences (NDEs) that support the probability of an afterlife involving another dimension, plus additional arguments, which of these options looks better? It appears that perhaps only the hardened view of “the natural position is my option and I’m sticking with it no matter what” remains. The evidence seems to have shifted. (In spite of the mention here, this will be a separate argument later.)

Response 24

Other apparently nonnatural considerations that indicate a different angle on the truth of Jesus’s claims and teachings could also help show that the resurrection was not some sort of natural anomaly. For example, if Jesus healed people and predicted his death and resurrection along with making other unique claims, these would all serve as indications that are far more consistent with an actual resurrection than with some abnormality.

Challenge 3:7—Antecedent Probability

Before examining any of the claimed evidence for miracles, it can be stated from the outset that purported miraculous events are so antecedently improbable, given what we know of nature and science, that no amount of evidence could ever surmount this level of unlikelihood.

Response 25

Scholars must be careful here that a priori objections or questions, which are fitting, do not slip into a priori rejections, which are illegitimate. We made this point at the outset of this chapter. The two positions can sometimes be very difficult to distinguish. Taking this critique somewhat further, in the context of mentioning the existence of the afterlife, even Flew asserted that Hume and Joseph Butler both agreed here: “Hume has argued that it is impossible to know a priori that anything must be or cannot be the cause of anything else.” Rather, a posteriori investigations are required. Yet, Flew also admitted that Hume failed at times regarding the application of this and similar matters to the study of miracles, where Hume exhibited some “momentary lapses” in part 1 of his essay.

Response 26

The statistics for antecedent (or prior) probabilities, as in the computations for Bayes’ Theorem, would have to be adjusted significantly on the notion of whether God did or did not exist, since in the former case it might even be expected that God might act supernaturally. This alone could move the overall case in the direction of a miracle, as both Flew and even Owen admitted. In short, if there is a God who chooses to act, this would be a huge impetus to the occurrence of miraculous events.

Response 27

If near-death experiences or certain other arguments indicated the probability of at least a minimal notion of an afterlife, then this would be another factor that could also favor the computation of probabilities in the direction of miracle claims. In such a scenario, the realm in which a resurrection from the dead would most commonly be thought to exist, namely the afterlife, would probably be true. This would be a huge step toward there being other similar events from the same realm, as with Jesus’s resurrection.

Response 28

If Jesus actually claimed to perform healings and exorcisms during his life, the general occasions of which are almost always conceded by contemporary critical scholars to be historical, then these might serve as actual examples of supernatural events. Perhaps the historical evidence is even stronger than critical scholars presume, and there are plenty of data to solve this issue by taking the historical route of an inference to the best explanation.

Response 29

Especially if well-documented miracle claims actually occur today, this would obviously also affect the likelihood that miracles could possibly have happened years ago during Jesus’s life. Many cases describe intriguing situations and details where amazing corroboration is apparently available.

Response 30

Concerning the chief miracle claim before us in these volumes, we need most centrally to address two key questions that can be answered by the historical information that we have presently. First, did Jesus die? And second, after his death, was Jesus seen again by his followers? The latter question is without reference to whether or not these sightings were supernatural events, but simply whether Jesus was actually seen in some form. Minus the supernatural element, both of these questions can be settled on straightforward inductive grounds (such as historical or medical information). Even agnostic New Testament scholar A. J. M. Wedderburn agrees with this conclusion, as do many other critical scholars.

As we already enumerated above, the value of the Shroud of Turin could be immeasurable in this context. Granted, the entire subject has not yet been settled scientifically, so this artifact cannot be tallied yet in the positive column. However, enough studies have already been conducted to allow the conclusion that this cloth is clearly an authentic archaeological artifact that could potentially tip the scales decisively by producing empirical evidence of a repeatable variety that may solve some of the most germane issues being discussed here. This research would also be another factor that could move the needle substantially in discussing our latest challenge here regarding the issue of antecedent probabilities as well as with other questions.

In sum, this third category of philosophical objections to miracle claims included some challenging questions, to be sure. Most of these specific questions were concerned not so much with the actual evidence that may or may not be available on behalf of individual miracle claims. Rather, this classification chiefly revolved around how and why a particular occurrence could be said to have originated from God’s hand, drawing heavily from the tie-in between miracle claims and worldviews. In this category alone, seven objections were raised and challenged by a total of thirty counterresponses.

For those who accept the very familiar and influential definition of miracles popu­larized by Hume and many others, or one like it, the link between God’s actions and miracles is a necessary connection, hence the import of this discussion. Among some two and a half dozen responses in this section are several hints to be explored later regarding where some of the tightest connections between God and historical events may lie.

Category 4: Historical A Priori Objections to Miracle Claims

The three categories of objections to miracles raised above were chiefly philosophical in nature, though these were often interspersed throughout with historical concerns and considerations as well. On the subject of whether miraculous events obtain, there is indeed much overlap between these two disciplines. As a result, many of the more historical a priori objections in this category also involve corollaries in the philosophical a priori section above, including similarities.

Challenge 4:1—Can historians comment on God or divine activity?

Historians cannot investigate miracles because they simply do not possess any tools that allow them to test for the presence of God or divine activity in the world. So, at least in principle, historians can only assume a natural methodology that deals straightforwardly with potential events and whether or not they occurred rather than with supernatural causation.

Response 1

Even if it were agreed that historians do not possess the tools to judge whether or not God was the cause of a particular event, it would still seem to be undeniable that the historical portions of the miracle claims nonetheless still remain front and center in historical investigation. In other words, we have emphasized often that there are basically two sides to a miracle—the historical side (did some event happen in space and time?) and the philosophical side (the meaning of the event, including worldview questions of possible divine causation). These demarcations are readily apparent in the categories of challenges in this chapter.

So, while the latter, philosophical questions may indeed seem imposing to historians, since they are not within their field of expertise, historians are the primary scholars trained to answer the first portion of the question regarding the occurrence of an event, whatever that was. This would be precisely in the very center of their training.

For example, historians may inquire as to whether Jesus died by crucifixion by evaluating the available data. Ehrman is more than confident that historians qua historians can affirm this fact without any difficulty whatsoever. Another skeptic, John Dominic Crossan, is equally positive of this truth, attesting of Jesus, “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.” He states further that “the soldiers would have made certain Jesus was dead.”

The second question is likewise deemed to be a historical one. Without inquiring or deciding regarding the nature of the events in question, were Jesus’s followers correct that they saw him alive again after his death by crucifixion, whatever the explanation? Again, agnostic New Testament scholar Wedderburn concedes that answering this question is a legitimate historical procedure.

Based on the strength of the historical data, other scholars have answered yes to these questions. Prominent, self-identified liberal scholar E. P. Sanders goes even further. He begins his discussion of the historical Jesus’s life by listing a number of consensus historical items upon which contemporary scholars almost uniformly agree. Some of these details may surprise today’s readers who are unfamiliar with the recent scholarly terrain, such as the state of contemporary studies on Jesus’s healings. Perhaps most astonishing of all, among the historical facts that Sanders lists as enjoying consensus critical agreement is that Jesus was actually seen by his followers in some form after his death by crucifixion.

It would seem then that if the question of whether Jesus’s postresurrection appearances were actually miraculous acts of God is bracketed, the other two questions regarding Jesus’s death and his being seen afterward remain fully historical issues. After all, people die and people are seen regularly. If Sanders is correct, both of these items are also affirmed by the majority of contemporary critical scholars. That even skeptics may affirm these occurrences, due to the strong reasons for doing so, at least gets the vital building blocks on the table. After all, these are the questions being addressed here. On these absolutely crucial points, this bypasses the miracle question for historians. In fact, it appears that this response alone has the ability to offset and even nullify the first skeptical challenge of the historical variety.

Response 2

Although these are probably minority opinions, many noted historians have pointed out the congruence between religious and historical beliefs, in part because they are not enemies. Rather, religious beliefs may even be brought into the historical arena and be investigated, as long as they are well-supported views. It has already been argued here from the best historical data why this latter position is even held by a fair number of skeptical or liberal scholars such as Wedderburn, Allison, and Sanders, along with still others who will be pointed out elsewhere.

Response 3

Although the pursuit of this topic would take us far beyond the theme of this volume, it should at least be noted that without much question, methodological naturalism is the most influential underlying philosophical position in this discussion, even though it has many exceptionally serious issues of its own. One of these problems has already been treated in detail here. The backdrop that grounds methodological naturalism—namely, metaphysical naturalism—is highly problematic and currently suffers from many major critiques. Some scholars have concluded that it has probably already been disproven. There are an entire host of topics that point in the direction of this demise, such as some specialized arguments for God’s existence, an entire cadre of facets drawn from the Intelligent Design and Fine-Tuning scientific arguments, strongly evidential near-death experiences, Jesus’s own miracles, modern documented miracle claims, a few successful double-blind prayer experiments, and the myriad strands of arguments for Jesus’s resurrection.

If naturalism has already fallen, as some have hinted, or will so in the future, it would seem that its methodological sister cannot be very far behind. From another angle, if a supernatural reality actually exists, then there must be some way to integrate both it and the natural world into contemporary inductive research, especially since they would be integrated already in our everyday lives. These theoretical and practical concerns will be left to other, more qualified individuals. Just one side note might be mentioned at this point. If miracles have ever occurred throughout history, it would indeed be odd if they could still not even be investigated by those who hold a presumed methodological naturalism. In other words, miracles actually may have happened, even frequently, while naturalists simply pronounce that they cannot be considered or examined. As concluded earlier in this study, the only alternative is to investigate supernatural claims to ascertain the answers to these issues.

Response 4

Some authors have suggested that perhaps believers possess the capacity to gain additional insights into situations where God’s presence may be detected. This may be the case because these individuals may already be more attuned to supernatural reality due to a personal relationship, such as their regular seeking of the Lord, as with the spiritual disciplines. A related idea was even mentioned by prominent atheist philosopher J. L. Mackie, who remarked that someone “who is fortunate enough” to have carefully observed and noted an apparently miraculous occurrence “is no doubt rationally justified in taking it very seriously” while still entertaining natural explanations as well.

Challenge 4:2—Is history too subjective and uncertain?

Historical investigations can never be totally objective, hence these studies are in-capable of producing proof or totally demonstrating a thesis. Further, the constant presence of subjective elements entering the research process can keep the researcher from being sure of their historical results.

Response 5

Sometimes it appears obvious that skeptical scholars attempt to go overboard in “loading up” the language and data against miracles. This is often done by utilizing exceptionally strong terms, such as “can never prove,” “cannot demonstrate,” “beyond all doubt,” “without question,” or “it is impossible.”

Going back some two-plus centuries, it was observed repeatedly in the previous chapter that Hume was a master of these techniques as well, as he insisted that “firm and unalterable experience,” “uniform experience,” and “a direct and full proof ” opposed all miraculous claims. On the other hand, Hume naturally considered that his own arguments amounted to an “entire proof,” even opening his essay with the words, “I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument . . . which . . . will . . . be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures.” In short, everything that the arguments from miracles were not, Hume’s arguments were, without virtually any questions or evidential arguments in favor of his position. It appears to go without saying that such stilted language both “proves” nothing while raising the ire of one’s opponents.

Response 6

Some elements of subjectivity exist in all inductive research, including even the most technical scientific, medical, and historical studies. For this as well as other reasons, none of the research in any of the fields discussed in this chapter is capable of producing any full, final proof of its teachings. Further, this has already been acknowledged readily by theistic writers and has been stated many times in these volumes. But to leap ahead from a lack of proof in inductive matters like science and history to some degree of subjectivity is an unwarranted and unevidenced conclusion. The inductive disciplines such as science, medicine, and history have always had to move from probability to knowledge, and there is a significant agreement in these matters. Moreover, this critique would ultimately disprove science. Therefore, moving from a lack of proof to a charge of subjectivity in these areas can hardly nullify probable inductive theses or their conclusions.

So as just mentioned, this epistemic knife cuts both ways. Since the skeptic’s research also utilizes historical, scientific, and other inductive conclusions, does it follow that she likewise includes subjective notions that similarly lack any species of strong evidence? Virtually no one would argue this way. There is no getting around the conclusion that, assuming inductive studies are being employed, probable factual arguments are the best on offer.

As many scholars have both remarked and acknowledged, subjectivity of more than one variety definitely may remain even in research. Armed with this knowledge, historians and others must be diligent, refuse to grow lazy, and be careful about their research so that these subjective and distorted features may be identified and removed as much as possible, making appropriate allowances for them.

Response 7

Beckwith argues quite intriguingly that this critical position based on the subjectivity of our knowledge and lack of proof may also entail there being no ascertainable bad historical judgments. But this is simply absurd. For example, suppose that one historian argues the traditional view that a dictator murdered millions of people for a variety of twisted psychological reasons. However, a second historian argues that this same dictator actually did so not because of his internal problems but because he loved the victims so much that he wanted them all to go to heaven much more quickly! Even compiling the relevant data to argue one view over the other requires historical research to yield a strong enough basis to make a ­probable decision.

Response 8

In spite of potential subjective issues in historical research and the inability to absolutely prove one’s conclusions, virtually no scholars deny that we can still gain knowable history through the normal channels of investigation. The available data are sufficient to gain this information. Even historians such as Carl Becker who are sympathetic to this challenge and think that interpretations are more difficult to determine, still acknowledge the presence of much history. Following Becker and others before him, the vast majority of even the skeptical, more subjective-leaning idealistic historians agree.

Challenge 4:3—Do miracles have to be analogous to other events?

We can recognize historical events and their meanings from the past only if they have analogies in the present. This critique is most frequently attributed to the writings of nineteenth-century German liberal theologian Ernst Troeltsch and is known as the “argument from analogy.” However, the idea (or perhaps hint) appeared at least 150 years earlier in Hume’s essay “Of Miracles.”

Response 9

By what scientific, historical, psychological, or other authority is this absolute rule required? On what critical grounds is the analogical test itself established? Somewhat like the verification principle above, this appears to be another example of a critical assertion or test that simply hangs there in space but is an unproven assertion. If so, it is similarly self-refuting.

Response 10

All information was new at some time. Could these past data never be recognized, interpreted, and accepted at that time until there was a later analogy? But automatically disallowing older, historical, or other information—in this case, miracles—is both self-defeating (because past information often provides crucial information that is necessary for the present) and also amounts to an a priori rejection.

Response 11

This principle would seem to dispute a great many events or scientific discoveries of the past, even if they were established by proper inductive procedures. For example, what about singularities like the Big Bang? Does it have any true analogy in the present or will it ever? If not, could it still be held that it occurred in the past?

Response 12

As Frank Beckwith notes, this argument confuses the “consistency and continuity” expected of the past with what may be discovered by these methods. But there is no reason why the historical method cannot discover, inspect, or research a historical singularity. The historical tools that have already been listed and discussed earlier in this study remain the same and can still be used to discover new data.

Response 13

Past events often have enough evidence to establish their historicity on their own. In such cases, how can the unproven, rather random requirement of present analogies step in and rule out the data itself?

Response 14

Many healings were apparently performed by Jesus, as argued in great detail by careful scholars like John Meier, Graham Twelftree, and Craig Keener among many others. Further, these events are largely accepted in some capacity by contemporary scholars, including very skeptical ones. These would actually provide some analogical events of another sort from Jesus’s own ministry.

Response 15

What if true miracles have occurred throughout world history, including in the present? Then there actually are analogies for these potentially supernatural events, and this principle could be completely fulfilled.

Response 16

The case of Jesus’s resurrection has at least some continuity with evidence derived from contemporary studies of highly evidential near-death experiences (NDEs) and similar phenomena, such as substantiated postmortem apparitions, deathbed visions, and the like. While these cases do not correspond completely to the resurrection, the NDEs would still be quite helpful in indicating some major similarities regarding the existence of an afterlife, hence providing key analogies for life in another realm altogether.

Challenge 4:4—Aren’t miracles just exaggerations told by gossips or by those in the ancient world?

People like to gossip, exaggerate, and even lie about miraculous or incredible events, and these stories quite often grow larger and even more farfetched in the multiple retellings. Additionally, miracles are thought by many to have occurred chiefly in ancient times among “ignorant and barbarous nations.” Such recurrent problems cast doubt on miracle reports.

Response 17

This objection is a very clear, textbook example of committing the genetic fallacy of informal logic. Even a correct explanation of an idea’s origin does not somehow “whisk” away the actual event into nonexistence. Ancient peoples had some correct beliefs too! So how do we know the difference between their true and false beliefs? Here once again, careful investigation is necessary.

Response 18

Hume’s comment concerning “ignorant and barbarous nations” is also an ad hominem abusive fallacy of informal logic. While making light of someone or criticizing him or her as a person may have advantages in some contexts, a formal argument is not one of them. There is no necessary connection between the characteristics of the person being criticized, whether true or false, and whether his or her argument is correct or incorrect, hence the fallacy.

Response 19

Hume introduced the case of the Jansenist miracles, providing some rather incredi­ble evidence on behalf of their claims. Were these reports guilty of being reported only among “ignorant and barbarous nations”? Not at all, for almost as if Hume was addressing his own charges, he judged that these events were “attested by witnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the world.” Further, upon inspection, the Jansenists were found to have neither lied nor otherwise produced falsehoods. These were quite noteworthy compliments.

So, if the Jansenist miracle claims were supposedly exempted from these charges according to Hume, then how did he respond? Hume still dismissed these healing cases and other anomalies with a mere wave of his hand. He asked what more was needed here besides “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.” Thus, it appeared that whether or not the critical conditions had been fulfilled by the available evidence, it ultimately made no appreciable difference. Miracles simply do not occur and that is enough. That is the extent of Hume’s investigation.

Even Flew seemed to struggle mightily with Hume’s treatment of the Jansenist cases, including Hume’s long endnote that adds many relevant evidential details. Flew remarked of Hume’s treatment, “It might seem that this must be inconsistent.” Really? Incredibly, Flew then allowed that Hume’s stance on the Jansenists could be consistent with part 1 of his essay, “which allows the theoretical possibility of establishing that a miraculous event has occurred” while still somehow rejecting it. Then Flew resorted to what appears to be an incredible ensemble of ad hoc special pleading comments, all to say that Hume should not be pushed too far in questioning his consistency! One wonders why not if, as it appears, Hume is simply mistaken here.

Response 20

This charge actually could be quite true, as it often is in antiquity, and yet it utterly fails to rule out every bit of ancient testimony. If so, then all or most of our earliest history could be in jeopardy. However, this problem fails to cause trained historians to give up on our knowledge regarding Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar, for example. As former Oxford University philosopher of history W. H. Walsh along with many other historians attest, in spite of these subjective factors we must allow for such errors and imprecisions and still ascertain what occurred, even in the far-off past. Similarly, historian Ernst Breisach reminds us that while ancient writers frequently engaged in artistic reworking of their material, contemporary scholars are still able to sort through the reports and distinguish historical truth from “the fanciful tale, willful distortion, and honest error” of the past.

Response 21

While it is difficult to ascertain whether or not Flew meant the comment somewhat tongue-in-check, he remarked that Hume’s third subpoint (or “check”) makes it seem as if the witnesses to miracles “must also be completely detached and disinterested.” Of course, it has been commented throughout that a few witnesses may indeed fit this description for many historical observations, and yet they may still be fully capable of properly observing and getting the facts straight. Nonetheless, the question will be pursued later in this study as to whether any resurrection witnesses might still have failed in this or similar areas.

Response 22

It already has been argued in volume 1 of this study that the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is superior and that this event can be demonstrated probabilistically in spite of such challenges and cautions, especially those regarding the nature of ancient texts. Further, it was proposed there that the minimal facts argument entirely abrogates this species of critique as well as others, in that it utilizes only those historical data where each fact is initially established by many other details. Incredibly, the entire list of these few minimal facts is supported by dozens of other factual considerations.

As a result of this factual basis, these individual pieces of data have even gained the endorsements of the vast majority of skeptical scholars who address them and affirm that there is plenty of information to assert that each of these facts is by far the best explanation of the findings. But it needs to be noted carefully, as we have pointed out already in a great amount of detail, that these historical facts are not true just because skeptical scholars assert them, but because multiple factual arguments support in detail each of these events. After all, the skeptics would hardly affirm the details without the evidence.

Challenge 4:5—Can postmodern considerations rule out supernatural occurrences?

Some postmodern studies indicate that all historical writing is relative in some sense, and that it often serves as a political power play to be used as a means to manipulate people and ideas. Beyond the historical data that are recorded, it is the resulting interpretations regarding the data that most trouble these postmodern writers.

Response 23

For anyone to hold that all historical knowledge is relative is a self-contradictory notion, as even skeptical historians like Charles Beard have conceded. As Beard concluded concerning the matter: “If all historical conceptions are merely relative to passing events . . . then the conception of relativity is itself relative. When absolutes in history are rejected the absolutism of relativity is also rejected . . . the apostle of relativity will surely be executed by his own logic.” Many other scholars also agree with this general assessment.

Response 24

This relativistic challenge is actually a nonsequitous accusation, an indication that its conclusion fails to follow from its premises. Even if some historical research were to exhibit all sorts of subjective issues involved with the writing of history, including history being written on manipulative grounds such as the ones mentioned here, this still tells us nothing about whether or not there may be good, trustworthy data that were still investigated and interpreted according to proper standards. As former Harvard University philosopher of history Morton White explains, “The mere fact that historians are biased is no argument against the existence of impersonal standards.” Many other researchers share White’s view as well.

Response 25

Relativistic historians too frequently apply their views to their own research in in-consistent manners. Contrary to their own conclusions, while these skeptics may view historical studies as unreliable in a host of ways, when it comes to their own relativistic conclusions, they are often alleged to be true, proper, and even objective!

Many examples were provided in our earlier volume 1 chapter, “Historical Postmodernism,” such as Beard’s general distrust of historical interpretations altogether, with the exception of his own rather novel views of the American Constitution—a subject concerning which he freely employed terms such as “coldly neutral” and “objective realities”! According to more than one scholar, the reason for Beard’s issues here is that he never really recognized these problems in his own writings, hence the subjective and objective elements remained in tension with one another. In brief, Beard’s relativism was inconsistent. White states it this way: “Beard’s later philosophy of history seems most implausible. It is obscure and contradictory . . . a lack of respect for logical rigor and clear thinking.”

Other examples of relativistic inconsistencies are not difficult to locate. Thomas Haskell criticizes Lyotard for being critical of more objective historiography, only to employ the latter techniques on other occasions. Haskell comments that Lyotard “puts his representational pants on pretty much the same way the rest of us do.” As a result, there is very little to distinguish Lyotard’s technique from those more objective approaches that he criticizes regularly. So Lyotard “seems in the end, in practice, unable to escape it . . . he acts as if the past is real.”

Kelly argues that postmodern relativists often make much stronger claims than their concepts would allow them as long as that move favors a position that they support. Kelly summarizes one of the main issues this way: “When the chips are down, most appeal to some sort of objective reality to settle the matter, with such appeals being seen as binding on all.” Yet, the implication is that when they argue against positions with which they disagree, they take a much stricter view of their theory!

Other historians produce more examples of inconsistent relativists. Perez Zagorin reports that Elizabeth Earmarth speaks often concerning past facts and then attempts to defend her lack of skepticism in these instances. Zagorin adds that post­modernist authors regularly speak about the past as if they think that these examples represent real facts and occurrences. Speaking more forcefully, philosopher Brian Fay makes the point that “most postmetaphysical metatheories implode because they utilize what they deny is legitimate.” Evans agrees that postmodernism often combines many “sometimes contradictory and conflicting ideas.”

It may be wondered if this seemingly regular inconsistency among postmodernists is really a correctable error. It appears to be so common that, as realists often charge, perhaps they espouse a theory that looks challenging in theory but can hardly be applied either when making their own case or in arguing against other positions.

Response 26

Bias in historical reporting usually can be both recognized and corrected. This is one of the chief roles that historians are prepared to do, and it is often the result of dialogue among members of the scholarly community. As just one excellent example, Kelly points out how Hayden White modified his own skeptical view in light of new data regarding the nature of the Holocaust.

As detailed in our earlier chapter, Breisach explains the progress here: “Generations of scholars have developed a historical methodology—testing, retesting, and absorbing elements from other disciplines—until by now it can act as a wall of defense against the fanciful tale, willful distortion, and honest error, as well as a sufficiently reliable instrument for truth-finding.” After much application, then, bias and subjectivity fail to “doom historiography’s ability to deliver useful results.” McCullagh adds the crucial conclusion that in spite of our never being able to discover the complete picture of the past, our myriad of checks and balances allows us to evaluate our data.

Kelly decides similarly, pointing out rather concisely that “bias is hardly incompatible with objectivity properly understood.” The latter can coexist with the former because “there are methodological tools, objective to a degree, which make it possible to make progress adjudicating such controversies.” While bias, selectivity, and outright prejudice will all remain, “none of this needs to compromise the integrity, accuracy, or objectivity of what is written.” So, according to Kelly, “The historian must take care not to superimpose present concerns and issues onto a study of the past.” To be sure, it is easy to make all these assertions, but if Kelly is right, there is at least a potential path for scholars to trod. Probably even the majority of professional historians agree at least broadly with a process such as this.

Response 27

The inductive procedures of applied historiography nevertheless yield knowable conclusions, as even relativist Charles Beard acknowledges: “He [the historian] likewise sees the doctrine of relativity crumble in the cold light of historical knowledge.” Many other major relativistic and postmodern historians and philosophers agree with Beard and regularly concede this point regarding the discoverability of real historical facts. Virtually all non-postmodernist scholars also agree with the legitimacy of the historiographical process as well.

Since this study chiefly deals with the question of miracles in general and the resurrection of Jesus in particular, it should also be pointed out that virtually no skeptical theologian or New Testament scholar, no matter how unconvinced, denies that the rules of historiography are indeed capable of discovering many historical facts regarding Jesus’s life. This can also be extended to information concerning the earliest church as well.

The ability to ascertain historical facts is the most significant critique of all with regard to this particular challenge, since the outcome is that data can be investigated and established. That such a wide array of scholars drawn from about every imaginable critical position agree with one another certainly does not demonstrate anything, but it does tend to indicate that it is the historical method, rather than scholarly agreement, that can indeed arrive at facts.

As McCullagh asserts rather remarkably, “I know of no practicing historians who admit that they cannot discover anything true about the past. They . . . do not deny that a lot of the basic facts they present are very probably true.” Indicative of this comment, three separate studies by philosopher Nicholas Rescher, historian George Marsden, and philosopher Stewart Kelly all reported after their own overviews of the field that the majority scholarly position definitely affirmed the existence of at least some historical facts.

Response 28

As to the prominent postmodern charge that facts may be less troubling than interpretations, McCullagh aims an absolutely crucial rejoinder: “An historical explanation or interpretation is objective if it can be proved superior to alternative explanations or interpretations according to commonly accepted criteria.” Therefore, “when historians compare different explanations and interpretations it becomes clear that they do have criteria by which they judge them.” Hence it follows that each factual or interpretational instance needs to be worked through carefully. But the vital point here is that such a process is possible and viable precisely because there are agreed-upon standards that are based on the data we possess.

Response 29

For those who are interested in surveys and overviews, the widespread notion among scholars in the field regarding postmodernism is that it has convinced very few professional historians and is definitely a minority position. Even prominent post­modernist Keith Jenkins admits this: “Protected by a continued adherence to common sense empiricism, and realist notions of representation and truth, most ­historians—and certainly most of those who might be termed ‘academic’ or professional ‘proper’ historians—have been resistant to that postmodernism which has affected so many of their colleagues in adjacent discourses.”

Nancy Partner offered this hard-hitting critique of the lack of postmodern influence in historical circles: “It is my impression that the ‘linguistic turn’ was a revolving door and that everyone went around and around and got out exactly where they got in. For all the sophistication of the theory-saturated part of the profession, scholars in all the relevant disciplines that contribute to or depend on historical information carry on in all essential ways as though nothing had changed since Ranke, or Gibbon for that matter.” Brian Fay draws a rather forceful conclusion as well: “Except for some interesting exceptions at the margins of the discipline, historical practice is pretty much the same in 1997 as it was in 1967: historians seek to describe accurately and to explain cogently how and why a certain event or situation occurred. . . . For all the talk of narrativism, presentism, postmodernism, and deconstruction, historians write pretty much the same way as they always have.” Once again, even accurate surveys prove nothing except the apparent lay of the scholarly landscape. But in the case of the scholarly environment, it does appear as if the postmodernist movement in all its aspects has failed to significantly change the course of historical research.

In sum, it seems that while the five historical a priori challenges dealt with in this section generally exhibited their own flavor in line with this particular discipline, there were also a fair number of similarities between the challenges in this cate­gory and some of the earlier philosophical objections. Nevertheless, over two dozen responses were also made, and none of the historical objections seemed to be very troublesome as far as successfully eliminating miracle claims or their investigation.

Hume suggested several times in his major essay that alternate, nonmiraculous scenarios would always be more likely than miracles. Much of the discussion in this volume from this point forward addresses the plethora of naturalistic and other attempts to better explain miracle claims.

Conclusion

We have entertained a total of twenty-two mostly a priori objections to miracle claims drawn from four basic categories. A variety of these challenges concerned topics such as the amount of evidence available, issues regarding the laws of nature and whether they could be adjusted to accommodate miracle claims, how a potential miracle could be identified as an act of God even if it had occurred, and several doubts regarding historical concerns such as postmodern trends.

Overall, just slightly under 100 total responses were directed toward the various challenges to miracle claims (an average of approximately four and a half responses per critique). The entire cartel of a priori objections appeared to have ended up fairly far from dismantling the potential case for miracles. Of course, the final evaluation at this point depends largely on one’s overall worldview outlook. Multiple responses and refutations greeted each of the challenges.

It is apparent that several of the responses raised in answer to questions concerning the occurrence of miracle claims recurred frequently enough that they could be divided into groups. Among the premier retorts to the critical challenges were the following groupings:

(1) A priori questions (which are certainly acceptable) too often morph into a priori rejections, which are illegitimate responses. The inappropriateness of the latter is both because the challenges reject inductive matters even prior to their investigations and because these retorts often commit a number of informal logical fallacies.

(2) Regarding the possibility of miracles, what was referred to here as the frame argument asks: Is it even possible that there could be a God who is able and chooses to act in spite of the framework of nature’s laws, or without interfering with any of those laws? The intent, at least at this point, is not to try in any way to actually argue that God exists, but simply to raise the awareness that if this is even possibly the case, then openness is needed to pursuing particular miracle-claim arguments to which some might not otherwise be open.

(3) Whether or not a miracle claim most likely occurred in the space-time world is determined by checking the data and ascertaining the likeliest occurrence. This mostly consists of applying historical research procedures. This was even the bottom line for this chapter, as just noted above. Volume 1 of this study already presented the majority of that data.

(4) However, whether or not an event is actually recognized and identified as a true miracle is determined by whether these occurrences can be traced as most likely coming from God’s hand. Two such involved approaches that purport to link the resurrection to God, each consisting of many subpoints, was attempted in the first volume of this study. One path moves from the likelihood of a theistic universe to the resurrection as an event performed by God actually requiring his attributes. The second route combines some of Jesus Christ’s rather unique actions, teachings, and assertions with his additional resurrection claim in order to ascertain the possibility that such an event just may have provided further validation of these earlier claims.

As stated when this chapter began with its plethora of challenges to the belief in miracles, most of the objections as well as most of the responses were a priori in nature. Hence, the purpose was to set up the nature of potential disputes and responses without stopping to ascertain whether each side actually had justifiable grounds for their assertions. This is the nature of a priori give-and-take. While moving further through this study, however, these a priori comments on both sides need to be pursued, hence requiring further investigation beyond the treatment in these considerations here.

This chapter on Hume and many of his successors pursued many of the pros and cons regarding the existence and recognition of miracles. It might be concluded from the robust number of responses to the objections that this survey ended at the place often arrived at in earlier studies as well. As Flew notes, every case must be examined on its own merits or lack thereof, but there is nothing that prohibits or otherwise stands in the way of the possibility that miracles have occurred in the past, occur in the present, and could occur in the future. Therefore, our search moves forward.

Notes

Benedict Spinoza, The Chief Works of Benedict De Spinoza, trans. R. H. M. Elwes, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1951), 1:87; also, Richard H. Popkin, “Some New Light on the Roots of Spinoza’s Science of Bible Study,” in Spinoza and the Sciences, ed. Marjorie Grene and Debra Nails (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), 171–88. For an example of the English deists, see Thomas Woolston, “A Defence of the Discourses on Miracles,” in Deism: An Anthology, ed. Peter Gay (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1968), 122–39. Woolston’s “Six Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour” were published between 1727 and 1729, about twenty years before Hume’s essay. Gay notes elsewhere that the deists were known for two primary themes: the wickedness of priests and the claim that God would not break his own universal laws. See Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Knopf, 1966), 383–84. John Herman Randall Jr. likewise agreed, noting that the deist’s central contention was that God would not violate nature’s laws as they had been revealed so magnificently via the Newtonian discoveries. See Randall, The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940), 291–93. As with Woolston’s discourses, almost all of these additional deist efforts also predated Hume’s essay.

These exceptionally prominent themes are widely displayed, most prominently in New Atheist authors such as Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: Norton, 2004), beginning with chapter 1, “Reason in Exile,” regarding the unreasonable nature of religion. Harris’s follow-up volume, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Knopf, 2006), emphasized throughout what he took to be Christianity’s lack of evidence (6, 25, 33, 43, 49, 51–52, 64–65, 67, 87–91) as contrasted with atheism’s exalted and superior positions (45–46, 51). Likewise, Christopher Hitchens complained regarding the faith-only stance of religious followers; see his work God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Hachette, 2007), 150–51, 202–4. In The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), Richard Dawkins seems to propose that religion (referring in context to Christianity in particular) has at least some of its roots in psychological maladaptation (207–21). The side effects include irrationality (214, 219), ridiculous beliefs (207–8), and the all-pervasive importance of faith without any evidence (134 and throughout).

For a few rejoinders directed to these New Atheist works, showing that there are indeed strong arguments for theism in general and Christianity in particular, as well as devastating critiques against atheism, see John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2007); Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007); Alister McGrath, Why God Won’t Go Away: Is the New Atheism Running on Empty? (Nashville: Nelson, 2010); Peter S. Williams, A Sceptic’s Guide to Atheism (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009); Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2007). Rather incredibly, the McGrath and McGrath volume here includes a comment displayed on its front cover by well-known skeptical philosopher of science Michael Ruse and directed at Dawkins, which states, “The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist, and the McGraths show why”! Other outstanding recommendations concerning the McGrath and McGrath text come from world-renowned scientists Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project and Harvard University astrophysicist Owen Gingerich.

Harris, End of Faith, 23. Even if Harris is only referring here to some rather than all religious propositions, he fails to acknowledge that evidential considerations on behalf of religious notions even exist at all, which is in spite of his knowing otherwise that such religious defenses exist (as indicated by his sources immediately below).

For several examples, Harris in Letter to a Christian Nation is aware of arguments that some believers propose from fulfilled prophecy (57–60); arguments against evolution, including the evidence of Intelligent Design (67–79); and from historical arguments, where he mentions Scripture and even Jesus’s resurrection (64–67). Yet Harris seems either to be oblivious or at least unaware of scholarly Christian teachings contrary to his assertions that believers simply accept these arguments by faith, “without evidence” (67). Hitchens (in God Is Not Great) also mentions Christian arguments from miracles (141–45), including Jesus’s resurrection appearances (135), and seems to treat these a little more fairly than does Harris, but ignores any strong points by believers. Dawkins (in The God Delusion) also at least mentions miracles and afterlife beliefs, as well as a lengthy section on what are often referred to as the related topics of cosmology, intelligent design, the anthropic principle, and irreducible complexity (35, 134, 137–138, 144–189, 208), but almost always served with a noticeable disdain. Yet, like the others here, Dawkins emphasizes throughout the role of faith in believers rather than any evidential considerations, almost as if believers simply never argue from that angle at all (134, 181). Life illustrations, stories, or examples (especially in Hitchens) that often make adherents to religion look naive are common, apparently to seal the diatribe, as if to represent the majority of those who espouse the Christian faith.

To be very clear here, it is not being charged in any way that because these New Atheist authors disagree with Christians, they are therefore deficient somehow. More positively for the skeptics, Hitchens does introduce David Hume’s essay against miracles when discussing the subject, which is far from naive in itself (God Is Not Great, 241–45). So even if believers disagree with Hitchens, they ought to recognize that he is nonetheless attempting to craft a response rather than simply ignoring Christian claims. Of course, he can be critiqued for his weak defense of Hume.

But the chief point to be raised here is at least twofold. The New Atheists seem regularly to willingly ignore and seriously mischaracterize the Christian arguments, judging that they are based on faith alone, no matter how strong the data. It is this theme that seems to be at the very head of their list too, often making a parody of what Christians are really arguing, trying to make them appear foolish while the atheists (which they sometimes refer to as the “brights”) are celebrated for their totally rational and scientific stances! The New Atheists who engage in such mischaracterizations deserve blame for this sort of behavior, especially when each of the best-known ones mentioned has debated evangelical scholars and the dialogues indicate that they have not done very well, even as judged by fellow atheists. In fact, the atheist “brights” seemed rather dulled by these public exercises. Further, with regard to their tactics, the New Atheists appear to share some kinship with the so-called mythicists, who seem willing to use any argument whatever, no matter how absolutely outlandish, in order to argue that Jesus never (or probably never) lived.

Both of these groups are also criticized regularly by other specialized critical scholars who very rarely support either of these radical positions, as indicated by the strong language such as that mentioned above from atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse, which was aimed at Dawkins, in addition to the other top-notch scholarly recommendations of the same McGrath and McGrath volume. This indicates why the New Atheists generally tend to appeal to more popular audiences of untrained readers who also tend to exhibit similar strong feelings toward Christian beliefs, reveling in the nasty and often angry language.

The consecutive numbering of these critiques will be continued throughout each of the four categorical objections to miracles, though the count will begin anew with each new category of challenges. Critiques that were already made and numbered earlier will still be listed again whenever applicable, but these repeats will not be numbered when the point being made is sufficiently close to the earlier one. Exceptions occur in cases where what appears to be a repeat point is actually extended further than the earlier version of the critique. This way, the reader should get a sense of the minimum number of the many different potential responses that might be made to each of these four total categories.

David Hume, “Of Miracles,” in Hume on Religion, ed. Richard Wollheim (London: Collins, 1963), 205–29, especially the last two paragraphs in part 1 (210–12) and the first subpoint in part 2 (212).

Antony Flew, “Miracles,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 5:349.

Dennis Jensen, “The Logic of Miracles,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 33 (1981): 150.

See this second critique in detail in George I. Mavrodes, “David Hume and the Probability of Miracles,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43 (1998): 173–81; cf. Stanley L. Jaki, Miracles and Physics (Front Royal, VA: Christendom, 1989), 92–93. Antony Flew actually seems to agree that this or a similar critique relates to more than one aspect of Hume’s notions of historiography and causality. See Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief: A Study of the First Inquiry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), 195, 204.

Hume, “Of Miracles,” 210–11.

Charles W. Kegley and Jacquelyn Ann Kegley, Introduction to Logic (Columbus, OH: Merrill, 1978), 138–39, 157; Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic, 7th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 100.

Pannenberg’s comment was made during a response to Flew following our initial debate on the subject of Jesus’s resurrection. See Wolfhart Pannenberg’s “Response to the Debate,” in Gary R. Habermas and Antony G. N. Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, ed. Terry L. Miethe (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 128, cf. 134.

For examples, volume 1 of this study treats some of these suggestions here, such as the evidence for Jesus being a healer and an exorcist and, to a lesser extent, the nature of Jesus’s key teachings, whether Jesus was unique among the major religious founders, or if he predicted his resurrection ahead of time. These last three topics are projected to be discussed in far more detail in volume 4.

Such as observed in one well-known form decades ago by the famous analytical philosophical challenge brought by A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (London: Dover, 1936), 5, 16, 19, 90, 101, plus chap. 1, “The Elimination of Metaphysics,” particularly 35–37, 40.

David Elton Trueblood, Philosophy of Religion (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 195–99, with the quotation on page 199. At the time Trueblood was writing, unlike today, logical positivism was still a live philosophical option (191). Observable from Trueblood’s treatment, the critiques appeared fairly quickly after the appearance of Ayer’s second edition in 1946.

Trueblood, 196.

Edgar S. Brightman, A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940), 4–6, 143, 396–97, particularly note 7; the quotation is located on 396.

See Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 66.

As a reminder of the overview in volume 1 pertaining to whether or not history should be regarded as one of the scientific disciplines, this debate took place in western Europe and North America over many decades, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and carrying well into the twentieth century. The general conclusion was that history should perhaps best be considered as among the second-order social sciences in the sense of presenting non-repeatable sense data. But history still relies on the accumulation of first-order information, such as eyewitness sources, interviews, and archaeological remains. A good “secular” example of this hands-on process can be found in Otto Eisenschiml and Ralph Newman, Eyewitness: The Civil War as We Lived It (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1956), which consists of the same such eyewitness sources, interviews, and archaeological relics of many sorts.

Throughout his essay “Of Miracles” (especially in part 2), Hume is pleased to pursue many of his own historical reflections on the past (as with the more specific Jansenist case discussed in the previous chapter, for example), or simply when referring to details in the lives of ancient persons such as Alexander, Vespasian, Lucian, Marcus Aurelius, or Muhammad; in ancient historians like Herodotus, Livy, Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius; concerning ancient locations like the city of Athens or the Roman Empire; or concerning far-away locations such as Turkey or China. But what would truly be to miss the forest for the trees here would be to ignore that during David Hume’s own life, his multivolume The History of England, 6 vols. (London: Gilbert and Revington, 1848), was most likely the best known of his works. Perhaps needless to say, though, Hume’s historical publications are not pursued with the same amount of epistemic rigor as his philosophical works. For some specific details concerning ascertaining the occurrence of past events, see David Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sec. 5: “Sceptical Solution of These Doubts,” ed. P. H. Nidditch, 3rd ed., ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarenden, 1975). An analysis of the intriguing relation between Hume’s philosophy and his history is provided by Nicholas Phillipson in David Hume: The Philosopher as Historian, rev. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012).

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912); see his chapter entitled “Truth and Falsehood.”

In Alfred Jules Ayer’s follow-up edition just ten years after the initial, 1936 publication of Language, Truth, and Logic (London: Victor Gollancz, 1946), Ayer admitted that his verification criterion was insufficient in itself to rule out metaphysical arguments (16). Further, he recognized the relevance and importance of investigating claimed historical events with regard to whether or not they occurred as well (esp. 19, but also 40, 101–2). Other relevant details include the initial concept of verification itself (5, 16), the differentiation of strong and weak versions (9), as well as exceptions (15).

J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 22–29.

Antony Flew, God and Philosophy (New York: Dell, 1966), particularly the variety of comments from both believing and unbelieving perspectives in chapter 7, “The Credentials of Revelation” under subsections 7.2–3, 9, 16, 22, and 26. Interestingly, Antony Flew’s last edition of God and Philosophy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005) still contains the important comments, again both pro and con, in subsections 7.9, 15–17, 22, 25, and 28. This includes his comment to basically check out the claims of what has or has not occurred. It is especially in this latest edition that Flew’s new introduction (9–17) notes some of the changes in current research that led him to what he termed a “conversion” from atheism to at least deism. Elsewhere, Flew makes a particular point of emphasizing Hume’s appreciation of eyewitness testimony of past events and its ability to yield proof or probability; see Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 175.

As noted by W. H. Walsh, “Can History Be Objective?,” in The Philosophy of History in Our Time: An Anthology, ed. Hans Meyerhoff (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), 224.

For the contrast between subjective and objective data, see Wilhelm Dilthey, “The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Life-Expressions,” in Theories of History: Readings from Classical and Contemporary Sources, ed. Patrick Gardiner (New York: Free Press, 1959), 220–25. This essay, translated by J. J. Kuehl, was originally published in German in volume 7 of Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig: Verlag von B. G. Teubner, 1927).

Benedetto Croce, “History and Chronicle,” in History: Its Theory and Practice, trans. Douglas Ainslee (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921), 11–26; cited here from Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, 47.

Ernst Troeltsch, The Christian Faith, ed. Gertrud von le Fort, trans. Garrett E. Paul (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 87–89.

R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 228–49, cf. 252–62, 292–96.

Charles A. Beard, “Written History as an Act of Faith,” American Historical Review 39, no. 2 (1934): 219–31; cited here from Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, 146–51.

Like other scholars of this ilk, even though Becker is sympathetic to the notion of the subjectivity, especially of historical interpretations, he still acknowledges and even assumes the presence of much history. Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932), 17–21, 28–31. Meyerhoff includes a different selection from Becker, “What Are Historical Facts?,” Western Political Quarterly 8, no. 3 (1955): 327–40; see Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, 132–37.

Such as Karl Mannheim, “The Sociology of Knowledge,” in Gardiner, Theories of History, 247–48. W. H. Walsh is a particularly balanced scholar, as seen in his essay, “The Limits of Scientific History,” Historical Studies 3 (1961): 45–57; cited here from Philosophical Analysis and History, ed. William H. Dray (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), particularly 60–61, 68–71.

See Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, 36.

Besides those historians mentioned in earlier chapters, another example would be the prominent French scholar Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 149–56, including normal historical illustrations that assume the presence of historical material (162–65, 195).

For the current state of the scientific testing and evidence, see the encyclopedic overview by Mark Antonacci, Test the Shroud: At the Atomic and Molecular Levels (Brentwood, TN: Forefront, 2015). Cf. Antonacci’s earlier book, The Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archaeological Evidence (New York: Evans, 2000); Mary and Alan Whanger, The Shroud of Turin: Adventure in Discovery (Franklin, TN: Providence House, 1998); Tristan Casabianca et al., “The Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data,” Archaeometry 5 (2019): 1223–31; Tristan Casabianca, “The Shroud of Turin: A Historiographical Approach,” Heythrop Journal 54 (2013): 414–23.

Antony Flew offers this notion in the context of explaining Hume’s position in his book Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 208; also Flew, “Miracles,” 5:350; Flew, “Introduction” to David Hume, Of Miracles (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1985), 19–23; George D. Chryssides, “Miracles and Agents,” Religious Studies 11 (1975): 319–27.

Cf. Richard Taylor, “Two Kinds of Explanation,” in Miracles, ed. Richard Swinburne (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 103–13.

This assessment will be counted as an extension of the earlier critique rather than as a new response. Hence, the criticism is not an addition to the consecutively numbered critiques.

Hume, “Of Miracles,” 223.

Flew, “Introduction” to Hume, Of Miracles, 9.

Similarly, see Norman L. Geisler, “Miracles and the Modern Mind,” in In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, ed. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997), 82–84.

Jensen, “Logic of Miracles,” 15.

As pointed out at this juncture in the discussion by David Basinger and Randall Basinger, Philosophy and Miracle: The Contemporary Debate (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1986), 48–49.

Cf. some similar ideas in Basinger and Basinger, 48–51. Cf. also Richard Swinburne, The Concept of Miracle (London: Macmillan, 1970), 26–27, 31; Swinburne, “Violation of a Law of Nature,” in Miracles, ed. Richard Swinburne (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 78–81.

Patrick Nowell-Smith, “Miracles,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 248–49.

Paul J. Dietl, “Of Miracles,” in Logical Analysis and Contemporary Theism, ed. John Donnelly (New York: Fordham University Press, 1972), 244.

C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 60–63 (see 59–62 in the 1960 Macmillan edition).

See Dietl, “Of Miracles,” 245.

Richard L. Purtill, “Proofs of Miracles and Miracles as Proofs,” Christian Scholar’s Review 6 (1976): 43.

Kegley and Kegley, Introduction to Logic, 143, 157.

Nowell-Smith, “Miracles,” 253.

See Werner Schaaffs, Theology, Physics, and Miracles, trans. Richard L. Renfield (Washington, DC: Canon, 1974), 44–47, 52–53.

Hume, “Of Miracles,” 211–12. This is another notion that Flew posits in agreement with Hume’s examples in Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 207–8. Following Hume, Flew agreed elsewhere too, as in his article “Miracles,” 5:349–50, and with his later essay, Antony Flew, “Neo-Humean Arguments about the Miraculous,” in Geivett and Habermas, In Defense of Miracles, 50–51.

Several examples from history, often consisting of innuendos and cognate arguments, bear on this issue. One well-known instance is the essay by Gotthold Lessing, “On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power,” in Lessing’s Theological Writings, trans. Henry Chadwick (London: Black, 1956), 51–56. Here Lessing charges that contemporary miracles and prophecies would be much more convincing than those same occasions from long ago since he had never witnessed the latter for himself, thus making much of the time difference and corresponding lack of recent eyewitness support (51–53).

In one of the intriguing moments that often arise in the history of ideas, Søren Kierkegaard responded to Lessing several decades later by opposing Lessing’s perhaps tongue-in-cheek contrast of the benefits regarding present observation of supernatural events. Kierkegaard charged that neither contemporaneity nor historical evidence availed anything substantial with regard to the exercise of faith. See Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David Swenson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 89, including note 2; also, Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments or a Fragment of Philosophy, trans. Howard V. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), particularly 108. However, Kierkegaard also noted that Lessing probably did not actually believe the supernatural items anyway, in spite of his affirmation to the contrary (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 88).

Jumping to the present by noting a recent, rigorous, and much more technical dialogue between two accomplished analytic Christian philosophers, only a few of the more relevant items will be pointed out here. At the turn of the new century, Alvin Plantinga published his magnum opus, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). In this text, he objected to certain evidentialist defenses of Christianity and argued that Christians do not need that sort of evidence in order to be assured of their faith (268–80). Throughout, Plantinga preferred the Reformed system of thought, constructed of self-attesting belief that relies primarily on special revelation and the internal witness of the Holy Spirit.

Plantinga’s thesis was challenged by Christian philosopher Timothy McGrew. After a very rigorous critique of the finer points of analytic evidence-gathering, McGrew concluded with some fanfare that “Plantinga’s critique of the historical argument is a failure—if not an abject failure, then at least a decisive one.” See Timothy McGrew, “Has Plantinga Refuted the Historical Argument?,” Philosophia Christi 6 (2004): 24. McGrew concluded by enumerating four strong conclusions that follow from his treatment (24–26).

McGrew’s article led to a rejoinder from Alvin Plantinga, “Historical Arguments and Dwindling Probabilities: A Response to Timothy McGrew,” Philosophia Christi 8 (2006): 7–22. After beginning with a genuinely impressive compliment and a few others throughout (7, 19–20), Plantinga leveled his own response. He posited that in his volume Warranted Christian Belief, he was not primarily attempting to critique or disallow historical arguments per se, as much as to postulate that they were not strictly necessary moves when the self-attestation of special revelation and the Holy Spirit were available. So then, if there were also strong historical arguments, then he was “delighted to discover that” and “I admire his [McGrew’s] way of making the point” (20–21). Plantinga closed his essay with the words that this development “is a real step forward and contributes substantially to our understanding of historical arguments” (22).

McGrew’s response (coauthored with his wife, Lydia) was to further clarify his argument. While he was pleased that Plantinga had come that far in his thinking, he was careful to point out that Plantinga’s journal argument “is a retreat” from the position that he had taken in his book, which had indeed formerly supported the stronger conclusions. See McGrew and McGrew, “On the Historical Argument: A Rejoinder to Plantinga,” Philosophia Christi 8 (2006): 37–38, chiefly 24. The McGrews then pressed forward to emphasize the need for careful research in order to ascertain which ancient historical events actually occurred, since there was no longer anything to stand in the way of such a study (31–32, 36, 38). The McGrews also briefly recount the conclusion to this matter in their essay “The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 644–50, esp. 650.

Hence, they will not be renumbered here.

Intriguingly, even Flew was aware of this argument, though he does not really comment on it except to call it a “tempting argument”! See Flew, “Introduction” to Hume, Of Miracles, 8; Flew, God and Philosophy, 154 (158 in the 2005 edition).

See Lewis, Miracles, 106 (103 in the 1960 edition). Lewis also addressed the subject briefly in his excellent and thoughtful essay “The Laws of Nature,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 78. Recall too, as pointed out in the previous chapter, that both the concept as well as the use of the term “frame” itself were among the most popular denunciations raised in early critiques of Hume’s essay from soon after its publication in 1748, as several writers comment in Stanley Tweyman, ed., Hume on Miracles (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1996). This argument is cited by authors Thomas Rutherford (27), William Adams (46–47, including using the word “frame”), William Rose (35–36, 66, 95), and James Somerville (128–29)—all writing between the years 1751 and 1767, except Somerville’s slightly later essay in 1815.

Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 27–28; Swinburne, “Law of Nature,” 80–81. In Lewis’s essay “The Laws of Nature,” he states that “in the whole history of the universe, the laws of Nature have never produced a single event” (77).

Flew made some similar points about the “strength” of nature and her laws, such as: “Our only way of determining the capacities and the incapacities of Nature is to study what does in fact occur.” See Flew, God and Philosophy, 153–54 (cited from 2005 edition). This statement would please many conservative defenders of miracles. It ought to be mentioned before leaving this point that the analogy of stronger and weaker scientific evidence is not always adequate. For instance, does a carefully and accurately weighed gram of paper clips rule out the strong likelihood of the Big Bang singularity?

See the further explanation in response 18 directly below.

Rudolf Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” in Bultmann et al., Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), with the quotations on 5 and 38, respectively.

Three renowned physicists who constantly argued in their distinguished publications against these dogmatic theses of scientism were Sir John Polkinghorne (former professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University), Stanley L. Jaki (former distinguished university professor at Seton Hall University, who delivered both the Fremantle Lectures at Oxford University and the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University), and Werner Schaaffs (professor of physics at Berlin Technical University). See Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Jaki, Miracles and Physics; and Schaaffs, Theology, Physics, and Miracles, with the last two being cited above.

Kegley and Kegley, Introduction to Logic, 151–52, 158; Copi, Introduction to Logic, 119–22.

For very specific details, see Gary R. Habermas, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), esp. chaps. 1–6.

Flew, “Miracles,” 5:347, 349, 352; Flew, “Neo-Humean Arguments,” 49–50; Flew, “Introduction” to Hume, Of Miracles, 7–8; Flew, God and Philosophy, 148–49 (153 in 2005 edition); Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 202; Flew, “Miracle,” in A Dictionary of Philosophy, rev. ed. (New York: St. Martin’s, 1979), 234.

Swinburne, “Law of Nature,” 78–84; Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 26–32; David Basinger, “Christian Theism and the Concept of Miracle,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 18, no. 2 (1980): 139–40; McGrew and McGrew, “Argument from Miracles,” 637–44, esp. 638, 641–42.

Basinger and Basinger, Philosophy and Miracle, 13.

Swinburne, “Law of Nature,” 78–79; Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 26–27.

Dietl, “Of Miracles,” 242–43.

Lewis, Miracles, 60–63 (59–62 in the 1960 edition).

Even Alastair McKinnon, who rejects the existence of miracles, makes this point in his essay, “‘Miracle’ and ‘Paradox,’” American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1967): 309. McKinnon’s essay is also available in Swinburne, Miracles, 49–52. See Swinburne, “Introduction,” and “Laws of Nature,” in Miracles, 3–4, 82–83, respectively; Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 2–3, 30–32, respectively; Lewis, “Laws of Nature,” 77.

Though he strongly disputes this objection, Larmer still provides a detailed statement of it. See Robert A. Larmer, The Legitimacy of Miracle (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2014), esp. 41–45, also 6, 51–52. One proponent listed by Larmer is William R. Stoeger, “Describing God’s Action in the World in Light of Scientific Knowledge of Reality,” in Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, ed. Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur R. Peacocke (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1996), 244. Another proponent listed by Larmer is Evan Fales, Divine Intervention: Metaphysical and Epistemological Puzzles (New York: Routledge, 2010), 16, 98; Fales, “It Is Not Reasonable to Believe in Miracles,” in Debating Christian Theism, ed. J. P. Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 299–301.

Lewis, Miracles, 60–61 (59 in the 1960 edition); Larmer, Legitimacy of Miracle, 39–40, 46.

German physicist Werner Schaaffs also argues that no miracles break the laws of nature. See chap. 6 of Schaaffs, Theology, Physics, and Miracles, 27–30, cf. also 66. See also Schaaffs, Christus und die physikalische Forschung (Berghausen: Evangelisations-Verlag, 1969); Schaaffs, Jesus, Meister der Natur (Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 1971).

Lewis, Miracles, cf. 10, 47, 69 (5, 45–46, 59 in the 1960 edition).

Larmer, Legitimacy of Miracle, 43.

Fales, “It Is Not Reasonable,” 299.

Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 8–79, as cited by Larmer, Legitimacy of Miracle, 8–79. Cf. Schaaffs, Theology, Physics, and Miracles, 61–66.

Larmer, Legitimacy of Miracle, esp. 42–46.

It should be noted once again that the consecutive numbering of responses will be restarted at the beginning of each of the four categories, in order to provide a sense of the overall direction and strength of the available rejoinders vis-à-vis each species or group of objections.

Nowell-Smith, “Miracles,” 246; Basinger, “Christian Theism,” 140.

Hume, “Of Miracles,” 212, 223; Nowell-Smith, “Miracles,” 253; Antony Flew, “The Impossibility of the Miraculous,” in Hume’s Philosophy of Religion: The Sixth James Montgomery Hester Seminar (Winston-Salem: Wake Forest University Press, 1986), 22–23; Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 193, 199, 207; Flew, “Miracles,” 5:349; Flew, God and Philosophy, 149–50, 155 (153, 159 in the 2005 edition); cf. Flew, “Introduction” to Hume, Of Miracles, 14–15; cf. also Basinger and Basinger, Philosophy and Miracle, 63–64.

As per the “frame argument” of C. S. Lewis and others, which we have already explained in this and the previous chapter. See Lewis, Miracles, 106 (103 in the 1960 edition); Lewis, “Laws of Nature,” 78. Note also the early critiques of Hume recorded in Tweyman, Hume on Miracles, with the specific articles already noted above.

Cf. R. F. Holland, “The Miraculous,” in Donnelly, Logical Analysis, 225–32. (Holland’s essay is also included in Swinburne, Miracles, with this same argument on 56–66.) It was originally published by the same name in the American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965): 43–51.

Swinburne, “Law of Nature,” 78–84; Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 26–32; cf. also Holland, “Miraculous,” 232.

For instance, see Stephen Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1984), 284–87; cf. the earlier edition of this work, Christian Faith and Other Faiths: The Christian Dialogue with Other Religions, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 231–33.

McKinnon, “‘Miracle’ and ‘Paradox,’” 309.

McKinnon, “Miracle,” in Swinburne, esp. 49–50.

Swinburne, “Law of Nature,” 78–84; see also Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 26–32.

Kegley and Kegley, Introduction to Logic, 143, 157.

Richard L. Purtill, “Defining Miracles,” in Geivett and Habermas, In Defense of Miracles, 68.

See W. David Beck, Does God Exist? A History of Answers to the Question (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2021); chap. 2 of Habermas, Risen Jesus.

Malcolm L. Diamond, “Miracles,” Religious Studies 9 (1973): 320–21; Nowell-Smith, “Miracles,” 245–46, 251; Basinger, “Christian Theism,” 140–41; Basinger and Basinger, Philosophy and Miracle, 15–16, 63–71.

Basinger and Basinger, 15–23. David Basinger had already taken steps in this direction in “Christian Theism,” 146–49.

Holland, “Miraculous,” 231.

Swinburne, “Law of Nature,” 83–84; also, Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 31–32.

Jensen, “Logic of Miracles,” 146.

Purtill, “Proofs of Miracles,” 48.

Swinburne, “Law of Nature,” 83–84; also, Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 31–32.

Many years ago, I arrived at a quite similar demarcation of what our surest facts might look like. See Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996), 263.

A fourth historical category of objections is also introduced later in this chapter.

Nowell-Smith, “Miracles,” 245–46, 251; Flew, “Miracles,” 5:347; Flew, God and Philosophy, 144–45, 149–50 (150, 153–54 in the 2005 edition); Basinger, “Christian Theism,” 139–49.

Flew, God and Philosophy, 149 (153 in 2005 edition). Flew affirms this position on behalf of Hume too; see Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 202.

Holland, Miraculous,” 225–27.

Norman L. Geisler, Miracles and the Modern Mind: A Defense of Biblical Miracles (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), esp. chaps. 5 and 11. For a more succinct case, see Geisler, “Miracles and the Modern Mind,” in Geivett and Habermas, In Defense of Miracles, 73–85.

Dietl, “On Miracles,” 238.

Basinger, “Christian Theism,”142–45; cf. Basinger and Basinger, Philosophy and Miracle, 89–90, 100.

Jensen, “Logic of Miracles,” 146–47.

In a chapter section entitled “The Validation of the Christian World-View,” John Warwick Montgomery maps out a six-step scenario for his bridge. See his The Shape of the Past: A Christian Response to Secular Philosophies of History (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1975), 138–45. This approach is mapped out more briefly in Montgomery, Where Is History Going? Essays in Support of the Historical Truth of the Christian Revelation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1969), 35–36; Grace M. Jantzen, “Hume on Miracles, History, and Politics,” Christian Scholar’s Review 8 (1979): 325; Douglas K. Erlandson, “A New Look at Miracles,” Religious Studies 13 (1977): 425; Tan Tei Wei, “Recent Discussions on Miracles,” Sophia 11 (1972): 24.

See chaps. 1–6 of Habermas, Risen Jesus, for the heart of the two arguments.

Flew makes this assertion concerning Hume’s essay in Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 202. Note also that Flew himself agrees on this matter in Flew, “Miracles,” 5:348–49.

See the examples given in Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 173, 178, 181, 183, 188, 190, 193, 199.

Defenses of specific New Testament passages can be found in individual journal articles and commentaries or in other specialized literature. For some examples of overview volumes on the general reliability of the Gospels or of the New Testament as a whole, see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017); James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Birger Gerhardsson, Reliability of the Gospel Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001); Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament: Countering the Challenges to Evangelical Christian Beliefs (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2016); Steven B. Cowan and Terry L. Wilder, eds., In Defense of the Bible: A Comprehensive Apologetic for the Authority of Scripture (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013); Michael R. Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Craig A. Evans, Jesus and the Manuscripts: What We Can Learn from the Oldest Texts (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2021); Paul Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable? A Look at the New Testament Evidence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986); A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), esp. lecture 8; Gary R. Habermas, “Recent Perspectives on the Reliability of the Gospels,” Christian Research Journal 28 (2005): 22–31. Although quite outdated, the old classic by F. F. Bruce is still valuable; see Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960). For a couple of the general works that treat particular textual issues, see Gleason L. Archer, New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982); Norman L. Geisler and Thomas Howe, When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1992).

For details on the method, see Gary R. Habermas, “The Minimal Facts Approach to the Resurrection of Jesus: The Role of Methodology as a Crucial Component in Establishing Historicity,” Southeastern Theological Review 3 (2012): 15–26. For specifics on the factual argument itself, see chap. 1 of Habermas, Risen Jesus.

This is Hume’s fourth subpoint in his essay “Of Miracles,” part 2 (217–218); Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 180–181, with the quotations on 181; also, Nowell-Smith, “Miracles,” in Flew and MacIntyre, eds., New Essays in Philosophical Theology, 245.

Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 183.

Edwin M. Yamauchi, Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Muhammad, rev. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1972), 40, cf. 20.

For a number of examples, see David Levinson, Religion: A Cross-Cultural Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); S. A. Nigosian, World Religions: A Historical Approach, 3rd ed. (Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2000); and esp. Edward Conze, trans. and ed., Buddhist Scriptures (London: Penguin, 1959), 11–12, 34; A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, “Preface,” in Bhagavad-Gītā as It Is, rev. ed. (Los Angeles: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1983); Lao Tzu, Tao Teh King: Interpreted as Nature and Intelligence, ed. Archie J. Bahm, 2nd ed. (Albuquerque, NM: World, 1986); James E. Ketelaar, “The Non-modern Confronts the Modern: Dating the Buddha in Japan,” History and Theory 45 (2006): 132–49; Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Hinduism: A Religion to Live by (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Robert Ernest Hume, “An Outline of the Philosophy of the Upanishads,” in The Thirteen Principal Upanishads Translated from the Sanskrit, ed. Robert Ernest Hume, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931); John A. T. Robinson, Truth Is Two-Eyed (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979).

Geoffrey Parrinder, Comparative Religion (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1962), 56.

Purtill, “Proofs of Miracles,” 47.

Jensen, “Logic of Miracles,” 151.

Jensen, 151.

Purtill, “Proofs of Miracles,” 45.

Hume, “Of Miracles,” 222–23; Flew, “Miracles,” 5:348, 353; Flew, God and Philosophy, 145, 152 (150, 156 in 2005 edition); Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Religion, 21.

Jensen, “Logic of Miracles,” 146–48; Holland, “Miraculous,” 231; Purtill, “Proofs of Miracles,” 44; Geisler, Miracles and the Modern Mind, chap. 5; Winfried Corduan, “Recognizing a Miracle,” in Geivett and Habermas, In Defense of Miracles, 105–11.

See especially Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993); cf. also Swinburne, The Existence of God, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991); Geisler, Miracles and the Modern Mind, chap. 5.

Flew, God and Philosophy, 152 (156 in 2005 edition); also, Flew, “Head-to-Head: Habermas-Flew,” in Habermas and Flew, Resurrection Debate, 49–50.

This is probably the best way to take Hume’s comments in “Of Miracles” that it is far more likely that the person reporting the miracle “should either deceive or be deceived” (212), as well as his later, similar comment (226). Critical scholars such as Bart D. Ehrman repeat comments like this quite frequently; see Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 208–12, esp. 211–12; also, Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 164–65.

Naturalists, materialists, and other fellows should be asked what sorts of evidences indicate the probability of their view. For three very careful treatments of this subject, see Stephen E. Parrish, Atheism? A Critical Analysis (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019); Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, Naturalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008); J. P. Moreland, Scientism and Secularism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018). Infamous atheist/agnostic philosopher Bertrand Russell stated, “I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. . . . The Christian God may exist” along with the other gods of Olympus, Egypt, or Babylon. See Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957), 44. Russell also commented when asked about God, “I don’t think it’s certain that there is no such thing. . . . I can’t prove they [the other gods too] don’t. . . . I think they are a bare possibility.” See the interview by Woodrow Wyatt in Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (New York: Avon, 1960), 20.

Stephen J. Wykstra, “The Problem of Miracle in the Apologetic from History,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 30 (1978): 157; cf. also Jensen, “Logic of Miracles,” 148.

This last point is discussed in much detail in volume 3 of this study.

D. Scott Rogo, Parapsychology: A Century of Inquiry (New York: Dell, 1975), 33–36.

Swinburne, “Law of Nature,” 79; Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 26.

No author, “Do You Believe in Astrology?,” Saturday Evening Post, January/February 1974; reprinted in The Reader’s Digest, May 1974, 211–16.

Roy B. Zuck, “What’s Wrong with Astrology?,” Moody Monthly (November 1968), 40.

Jensen, “Logic of Miracles,” 148, 151.

For a different sort of argument indicating that no other worldview even comes close to Christianity in terms of evidence and explanatory power, see Kenneth Samples, Seven Truths That Changed the World: Discovering Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012). Cf. also J. N. D. Anderson, Christianity and Comparative Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1970), particularly chaps. 2–4, or the updated version by Anderson, Christianity and World Religions: The Challenge of Pluralism (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1984).

These are among the major points argued in the volumes in the previous footnote by Samples and Anderson, among other major studies.

It must be remembered that the discussions here regarding both the objections to miracles as well as the potential responses have been carried out in an a priori manner, where neither side is required to produce its reasons or evidences as of yet.

Though Hume did not state it exactly this way, it is quite reminiscent of his comments, such as in “Of Miracles,” 212. Flew is probably most responsible for asking this creative question explicitly; see “Miracles,” 5:346–53; cf. Jensen, “Logic of Miracles,” 149.

Wykstra, “Problem of Miracle,” 154–63.

By the way, Flew himself was willing to admit that mass hallucinations do not occur: “I have always understood that mass or collective hallucinations cannot really happen.” See Habermas and Flew, Resurrection Debate, 86–87, cf. 52.

Flew, in Habermas and Flew, 39, cf. also 3.

Licensed clinical psychologist Gary Sibcy, PhD, attested in private correspondence (March 10, 2009): “I have surveyed the professional literature (peer-reviewed journal articles and books) written by psychologists, psychiatrists, and other relevant healthcare professionals during the past two decades and have yet to find a single documented case of a group hallucination, that is, an event for which more than one person purportedly shared in a visual or other sensory perception where there was clearly no external referent.” Physician Joseph Bergeron discovered the same result in a comprehensive data base search of the Pubmed and American Psychological Association websites; see Gary R. Habermas, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter,” Irish Theological Quarterly 80 (2015): esp. 162.

These problems are detailed in both the appropriate chapters in volume 1 as well as in the applicable chapters in this volume, especially on hallucination hypotheses.

For example, the exceptionally early creedal statement in 1 Cor 15:3–7 alone lists three such group sightings to “the Twelve,” to the 500 at once, and to “all the apostles.” The Gospels and Acts sermon summaries add other apparent group appearances to this list as well, such as the most critically recognized ones to the twelve disciples and to the women who went to the tomb.

Even for those who tend to support the concept of group hallucinations, the exceptionally rare possible stories of this nature in recent history as contrasted with the number of well-attested group appearances of Jesus over such a brief time period form an incredibly enormous barrier by itself.

Even Ehrman does not consider this view to be very likely in How Jesus Became God, 165.

On the disciples dying or at least being willing to die for their faith, as well as the question of whether any of them recanted their faith later, see the revised PhD dissertation by Sean McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles: Examining the Martyrdom Accounts of the Closest Followers of Jesus (Surrey: Ashgate, 2015). On the disciples’ willingness to die for their faith, see 14, 150–51, 243, 246, 256–57, 259–65. On the question of any apostles recanting, see 6, 8, 243, 259–65. See volume 1 of this study in the chapter on the disciples’ transformations for other supporting sources.

See the first appendix in volume 1 for many NDE examples and details.

See Habermas, Risen Jesus, chaps. 1–6.

David Owen, “Hume versus Price on Miracles and Prior Probabilities,” in Swinburne, Miracles, 115–32, esp. 126–29. Owen’s article was published previously in the Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1987): 187–202.

Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 168.

Flew, 171, 173, quotation on 173.

Flew, in Habermas and Flew, Resurrection Debate, esp. 39; Owen, “Hume versus Price,” 132.

As I have argued in several places, such as Risen Jesus, 60–62, 71; Gary R. Habermas, “Resurrection Appearances of Jesus as After-Death Communication: Response to Ken Vincent,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 30 (2012): 149–58.

Regarding Jesus performing events such as these, see the massive treatments by John P. Meier in volume 2 of A Marginal Jew: Mentor, Message, and Miracles, 5 vols., Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 2001); Graham H. Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological Study (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999); Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), esp. chap. 1 of vol. 1.

See these contemporary discussions: H. Richard Casdorph, The Miracles: A Medical Doctor Says Yes to Miracles (Plainfield, NJ: Logos, 1976); Rex Gardner, Healing Miracles: A Doctor Investigates (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1986); Keener, Miracles.

While some of the individuals in Casdorph and Gardner above are exemplary, Keener produces the most cases by far of both healing (see Miracles, 1:428, 431–32, 435, 440, 463, 491, 503; 2:680, 682n2, cf. the comments on 607) as well as apparent exorcisms (2:800, 815, 838–40, 843n381, 847, 851–52, cf. the comments on 784, 788, 856).

A. J. M. Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 12–19, 21–23, 38–39.

For just one of the dozens of authoritative and largely experimental results, see “insider” scientific specialist and Jewish researcher Barrie M. Schwortz, “The History and Current State of Modern Shroud Research,” in Raised on the Third Day: Defending the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Essays in Honor of Dr. Gary R. Habermas (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2020), 201–24.

See the sources on this subject already listed above.

For highly influential philosophical treatments of this relation between God’s existence and the laws of nature, see Stephen T. Davis, “God’s Actions,” in Geivett and Habermas, In Defense of Miracles, 163–77; William P. Alston, Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 81–102, 197–222; Alston, “How to Think about Divine Action,” in Divine Action: Studies Inspired by the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer, ed. Brian Hebblethwaite and Edward Henderson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 51–70; Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 429–58.

Atheist New Testament specialist Bart D. Ehrman has been an outspoken advocate regarding the historian’s inability to judge the truth or falsehood of miracle claims. He makes an epistemic move somewhat reminiscent of Hume as well as the third category of objections above, in that even if miracles had actually happened, “the historian cannot demonstrate it.” He considers this to be an “insurmountable” issue in discussions of miracles. See Ehrman, New Testament, 208, cf. 210–12. Ehrman often repeats these and very similar claims, as in his other volumes such as Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 227–30; Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 315–17. In How Jesus Became God, Ehrman states clearly that the resurrection can neither be proven nor disproven by historical means (132, 143, 204). Defenses of methodological naturalism from a different perspective are also provided by Tor Egil Førland, “Acts of God, Miracles, and Scientific Explanation,” History and Theory 47 (2008): 483–94; Førland, “Historiography without God: A Reply to Gregory,” History and Theory 47 (2008): 520–32; Flew, God and Philosophy, 146–47.

Ehrman declares, “That Jesus died by crucifixion is almost unanimously attested in our sources.” See Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 163. Similarly strong comments are addressed on 156–58, 163–64, 173, 291–92, 327–31.

John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 145, 154, respectively. Similarly, Crossan asserts, “I take it absolutely for granted that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” See Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 372, cf. 375.

As noted above, Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection, 12–19, 21–23, 38–39.

E. P. Sanders identifies himself as a liberal in his influential volume Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 334.

E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993), 6, 11, 13, 278, 280.

Recall that the question of whether or not Jesus was resurrected from the dead via a miracle is not being discussed here.

Among the most incredible comments in this regard is the statement by well-known skeptical scholar Dale Allison, who comments, “I think that the tomb was probably empty, although I am sure that the disciples saw Jesus after his death.” See Dale C. Allison Jr., Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 346. Allison makes a similar comment on 343–44. Similarly, Allison comments in his more recent, 2021 volume on Jesus’s resurrection, “I believe that the disciples saw Jesus and that he saw them, and next Easter will find me in church.” Dale C. Allison Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (New York: Bloomsbury, 2021), 3. This is an example of the widespread recognition on the part of critical scholars, as just recounted by Sanders.

Brad S. Gregory, “No Room for God? History, Science, Metaphysics, and the Study of Religion,” History and Theory 47 (2008): 495–519; Jon Butler, “Theory and God in Gotham,” History and Theory 45 (2006): 47–61; Mark S. Cladis, “Modernity in Religion: A Response to Constantin Fasolt’s History and Religion in the Modern Age,” History and Theory 45 (2006): 93–103; Montgomery, Shape of the Past, 138–45; William Wand, Christianity: A Historical Religion? (Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 1972), 29–31, 51, 59, 70–71, 84–85, 91–94, 122, 139–40; Paul Barnett, The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 6–8, 26, 55, 77, 106, 185–86. Cf. also Walsh, “Can History Be Objective?” in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, 218.

For good overviews of these matters, see Goetz and Taliaferro, Naturalism, 7, 26, 32, 44, 50–51, 84–85, 90, 93, 117–122; Parrish, Atheism?, 27–33; Moreland, Scientism and Secularism, 49–84, 161–71. See also Robert A. Larmer, “The Many Inadequate Justifications of Methodological Naturalism,” Organon F 26 (2019): 5–24; Tiddy Smith, “Methodological Naturalism and Its Misconceptions,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 82 (2017): 321–36; Michael A. Cantrell, “Must a Scholar of Religion Be Methodologically Atheistic or Agnostic?,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84 (2016): 373–400.

For just a very few of the many treatments here, see Jerry L. Walls and Trent Dougherty, eds., Two Dozen (or So) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Stephen E. Parrish, God and Necessity: A Defense of Classical Theism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997); Donnelly, Logical Analysis; Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperCollins, 2009); Gary R. Habermas, “Evidential Near-Death Experiences,” in The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism, ed. Jonathan J. Loose, Angus J. L. Menuge, and J. P. Moreland (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), 227–44; Candy Gunther Brown, Testing Prayer: Science and Healing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).

For an exceptionally creative treatment of this subject, see David Brooks’s op-ed article, “The Neural Buddhists,” New York Times, May 13, 2008.

J. P. Moreland, “Creation Science and Methodological Naturalism,” in Man and Creation: Perspectives on Science and Theology, ed. Michael Bauman and Lissa Roche (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 1993), 105–39; Moreland, Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), particularly chap. 6.

Such as Basinger, “Christian Theism,” 148–49; Francis J. Beckwith, “History and Miracles,” in Geivett and Habermas, In Defense of Miracles, 88–91.

Mackie, Miracle of Theism, 28.

Ernest Nagel notes this problem and explains it, while still offering a corrective to it; see “The Logic of Historical Analysis,” in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, 212–13, 215.

Such as Ehrman, Apocalyptic Prophet, 227–30; cf. related ideas in Basinger and Basinger, Philosophy and Miracle, 15–18, 23, 59–71.

Hume, “Of Miracles,” 210–11.

These last two quotations are found in Hume’s “Of Miracles,” 212, and in the introduction to part 1 (206), respectively.

Nagel, “Logic of Historical Analysis,” 215; and also Walsh, “Can History Be Objective?,” 217.

Beckwith, “History and Miracles,” 89.

Walsh, “Can History Be Objective?,” 224.

Becker, “What Are Historical Facts?,” 132–35.

The scholars and sources mentioned earlier in this chapter and elsewhere in this study (such as the chapter in volume 1 on postmodern history) will not be repeated again here, but a sample list of some of the skeptical researchers who would still agree with Becker on the possibility of knowing historical facts would include Hume, Dilthey, Croce, Troeltsch, Collingwood, Beard, Mannheim, Walsh, Russell, Ayer, Mackie, Flew, and Foucault. Meyerhoff’s comment concerning even skeptics not denying the historical process itself is instructive in this regard (Philosophy of History, 36).

Ernst Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology,” in Religion in History: Ernst Troeltsch—Essays, trans. James Luther Adams and Walter F. Bense (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 11–32 (originally written in 1898); also reproduced in Gregory W. Dawes, ed., The Historical Jesus Quest: Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), esp. 32–39. See also Hume, “Of Miracles,” part 2. A more recent version of this charge is mentioned by Antony Flew, “Introduction” to Hume, Of Miracles, 13, 18; also Flew, God and Philosophy, 146 (150 in the 2005 edition).

Beckwith, “History and Miracles,” 97.

See the references above to the research presented in Meier’s A Marginal Jew, Twelftree’s Jesus the Miracle Worker, and volume 1 of Keener’s Miracles.

For literally thousands of details, see also the references above to the works by physicians Richard Casdorph (The Miracles) and Rex Gardner (Healing Miracles), as well as Keener’s monumental two-volume work, Miracles, including many carefully documented examples.

Hume, “Of Miracles,” part 2, objection 3. Flew notes that Hume meant these four subpoints not as offensive moves capable of disproving miracles or of providing “an insuperable bulwark” against them, but only “as a check” against their occurrence. See Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 174, 177.

Copi, Introduction to Logic, 92.

Copi, 92; Kegley and Kegley, Introduction to Logic, 127–28, 156–57.

Hume, “Of Miracles,” 220.

Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 185–86.

W. H. Walsh, Philosophy of History: An Introduction (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 18–22, 100–103.

Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 56–72, 408.

Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, 177.

Some of the major postmodern scholars include Jean-François Lyotard, “The Postmodern Condition,” in The Postmodern History Reader, ed. Keith Jenkins (London: Routledge, 1997); Hayden White, The Fiction of Narrative: Essays of History, Literature, and Theory, 1957–2007, ed. Robert Doran (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); White, Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); White, “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth,” in Jenkins, Postmodern History Reader, 292–96; White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1978); Keith Jenkins, “Introduction: On Being Open about Our Closures,” in Jenkins, Postmodern History Reader, 1–30; Jenkins, On ‘What is History?’ From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London: Routledge, 1995).

Beard, “Written History,” 147–48.

Here and in the footnotes below, we will not repeat all the sources from our earlier chapter in volume 1 on “Historical Postmodernism,” but a sample listing of some of the scholars who would agree at least generally with this first critique would include Peter Novick, Richard Evans, Brian Fay, Thomas Haskell, Perez Zagorin, Alan B. Spitzer, Stuart Kelly, John Tosh, Ben Meyer, and Scot McKnight.

Morton White, in Walsh, “Can History Be Objective?,” 194–95, quotation on 194. For a few related thoughts, see White’s text, Foundations of Historical Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 229.

These scholars include Ernest Nagel, C. Behan McCullagh, Chris Lorenz, and James Tabor, among many others. See chapter 3, “Historical Postmodernism” (55–88) in volume 1 of this study.

These two descriptions are found in the introduction in Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1935), ix–x. See also Beard, “Written History,” 149–50.

White, in Walsh, “Can History Be Objective?,” 200; cf. also Breisach, Historiography, 333; along with Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, 138.

Thomas L. Haskell, “Objectivity Is Not Neutrality: Rhetoric vs. Practice in Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream,” History and Theory 29 (1990): 155–56, as cited by Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2010), 90–91.

Stewart E. Kelly, Truth Considered and Applied: Examining Postmodernism, History, and Christian Faith (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2011), 112. Kelly also notes that Goss and Levitt similarly charge postmodernists with speaking with very similar assurances (227).

Perez Zagorin, “History, the Referent, and Narrative: Reflections on Postmodernism Now,” History and Theory 38 (1999): 14, as cited by Licona, Resurrection of Jesus, 79–80.

Zagorin, “History,” 14.

Brian Fay, “Nothing but History?,” History and Theory 37 (1998): 84.

Richard J. Evans, In Defense of History (New York: Norton, 1999), 222n6.

Kelly, Truth Considered and Applied, 199, 204. Other scholars, especially historians, likewise agree with this process. Further details are supplied by Walsh, Philosophy of History, 19; Nagel, “Logic of Historical Analysis,” 210, 212–13; Breisach, Historiography, 408; C. Behan McCullagh, The Truth of History (London: Routledge, 1998), 38; cf. also Alan B. Spitzer’s thoughtful text, Historical Truth and Lies about the Past: Reflections on Dewey, Dreyfus, de Man, and Reagan (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

Breisach, Historiography, 408.

McCullagh, Truth of History, 38.

Kelly, Truth Considered and Applied, 204.

Kelly, 215.

Kelly, 217.

Kelly, 213.

Spitzer’s volume Historical Truth and Lies (especially the introduction) is a remarkable attempt to actually work through some of these issues in order to settle some of these historical disagreements. One of Spitzer’s main contentions, as seen above, is that when crucial issues are at stake, even postmodernist thinkers regularly resort to processes that are similar to more objective methodologies and arguments that they have actually rejected elsewhere.

Beard, “Written History,” 148. Cf. also Beard’s earlier comment in the same essay, where after noting that personal selection processes are involved too, he still affirms that it remains the case that “facts, multitudinous and beyond calculation are known” (141). As indicated here, no one denies the subjective biases, but that Beard realizes the facts still clearly remain is a crucial recognition.

A list of some of the earlier precursors to contemporary postmodernists who agree here can be found in Habermas, Historical Jesus, 268–69n35. This list of skeptic scholars includes Wilhelm Dilthey, Benedetto Croce, Robin Collingwood, Charles Beard, and Carl Becker, to which Karl Mannheim ought also to be added (as in note 36 in Habermas, Historical Jesus). Another list of postmodern scholars who agree can be found in the chapter “History and Postmodernism” in volume 1 of this work as well as earlier in this volume. This group includes Jean-François Lyotard, Hayden White, Frank Ankersmit, and Keith Jenkins, among others.

In addition to the skeptics just mentioned directly above, here are just a few of the additional researchers whose writings have been identified in this chapter and the earlier one (“Historical Postmodernism,” volume 1) as holding to historical research: Ernest Nagel, John Dewey, Christopher Blake, William H. Dray, Isaiah Berlin, Morton White, W. H. Walsh, Bruce Mazlish, David Hacket Fischer, C. Behan McCullagh, Brian Fay, Thomas Haskell, Perez Zagorin, Alan B. Spitzer, Ernst Breisach, George Marsden, Nicholas Rescher, Mark Gilderhus, Stewart E. Kelly, Nancy Partner, Donald Akenson, John Tosh, and Carol Cleland.

As with the previous notes above, the chapter “History and Postmodernism” in the previous volume also lists many theological and New Testament skeptics who agree that there are knowable facts concerning the historical Jesus. Many of these researchers are agnostics or atheists: Gerd Lüdemann, A. J. M. Wedderburn, James D. Tabor, Dale Allison, John A. T. Robinson, and E. P. Sanders. From other chapters on this study, we may add David Strauss, Ernest Renan, F. C. Baur, Albert Schweitzer, Otto Pfleiderer, Rudolf Bultmann, Norman Perrin, Willi Marxsen, Michael Goulder, Paul van Buren, William Hamilton, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Robert Funk, Burton L. Mack, Roy W. Hoover, Robert J. Miller, Thomas Sheehan, Donald Cupitt, and John Shelby Spong.

McCullagh, Truth of History, 15. In addition, McCullagh declares that philosophers of history will provide additional responses whenever other challenges are leveled at the veracity of historical facts.

Nicholas Rescher, Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1997), 199–200; George M. Marsden, “Christian Advocacy and the Rules of the Academic Game,” in Religious Advocacy and American History, ed. Bruce Kuklcik and D. G. Hart (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 8; Kelly, Truth Considered and Applied, 8n34, 112–15, 127, 198, 201, 206, 212, 216–18.

McCullagh, Truth of History, 308 (emphasis added).

Breisach, Historiography, 407–8; Nancy F. Partner, “Historicity in an Age of Reality-Fictions,” in A New Philosophy of History, ed. Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 22; Evans, In Defense of History, 4; Mark T. Gilderhus, History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010), 118; John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods, and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (London: Longman, 1984), 194–200.

Jenkins, “On Being Open,” 1, also 12.

Partner, “Historicity in an Age of Reality-Fictions,” in Ankersmit and Kellner, New Philosophy of History, 22.

Fay, “Nothing but History?,” 83.

Examples include Hume, “Of Miracles,” 212, 214–16, 225–26.

Strangely enough, even Antony Flew stated: “The scholarly and the businesslike procedure is to examine arguments one by one.” See Flew, God and Philosophy, 141. Then later, Flew rather incredibly declared that “our only way of determining the capacities and the incapacities of Nature is to study what does in fact occur” (149; 153 in the 2005 edition). It should be noted carefully that the earlier 1966 text cited here was written when Flew was a thoroughgoing atheist—indeed, the best-known philosophical example of this position in the world. Thus, the oddness of Flew making these assertions is that both statements represent key moves that the Christian apologist also desires to make. This is fantastic common ground to share in order to best investigate these miracle claims.

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