Miracles

Abstract

Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles, III) says “those things are properly called miracles which are done by divine agency beyond the order commonly observed in nature (praeter ordinem communiter observatum in rebus).” A miracle, philosophically speaking, is never a mere coincidence no matter how extraordinary or significant. (If you miss a plane and the plane crashes, that is not a miracle unless God intervened in the natural course of events causing you to miss the flight.) A miracle is a supernaturally (divinely) caused event - an event (ordinarily) different from what would have occurred in the normal (“natural”) course of events. It is a divine overriding of, or interference with, the natural order. As such, it need not be extraordinary, marvelous or significant, and it must be something other than a coincidence, no matter how remarkable — unless the “coincidence” itself is caused by divine intervention (i.e., not really a coincidence at all). Miracles, however, are ordinarily understood to be not just products of divine intervention in the natural order, but extraordinary, marvelous and significant as well. Thus, Aquinas says a miracle is “beyond the order commonly observed;” and Dr. Eric Mascall says that the word “miracle” “signifies in Christian theology a striking interposition of divine power by which the operations of the ordinary course of nature are overruled, suspended, or modified” (Chamber’s Encyclopaedia). The locus classicus for modern and contemporary philosophical discussion of miracles is Chapter X (“Of Miracles”) of David Hume’s Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1748. He says “A miracle may accurately be defined, a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent” ( Enquiries, p. 115n). His slightly different definition of a miracle as “a violation of the laws of nature” appears to be central to his argument against justified belief in miracles. “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined” (Enquiries, p. 114).