Can Miracles Happen Today?

             Recently, I had to read Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton for an assignment. One of the topics he discusses in that book is the place of miracles in the Christian faith. Anyone who wants to embrace the Christian faith has to address the issue of miracles in the Bible. C. S. Lewis found the same to be true and ended up writing an entire book on the topic.

            As a rationalist and ‘reasonable agnostic’ (as he calls himself), who eventually embraced Christianity, Mr. Chesterton presents his arguments interwoven with the evolution of his own thinking and the maturing of his own convictions. He had effectively proved the ineffectiveness of modern arguments against Christianity and the hopelessness it brings in his previous book, ‘Heretics.’ His contemporary Europeans who came from a Christian background also were complaining that the creeds of Christianity was many times not clear and it did not make sense to the modern mindset. The critical historical analysis had already taken root in Europe and many of the teachings of the Bible were considered implausible. One area that came under repeated attacks from many corners is the miracles in the Bible. It had to be expected from the new mindset of European thinkers, Christian and non-Christian when we acknowledge that miracles and revelation are two things that set apart Christianity from all other religions.

            Chesterton did not consider a ‘modern European free thinker’ is a man who thinks for himself.  He wrote, “it means a man who, having thought for himself, has come to one particular class of conclusions, the material origin phenomena, the impossibility of miracles, the improbability of personal immortality and so on.”¹ In other words, Chesterton realized that materialistic worldview that had taken solid root in Europe was one reason why people could no longer believe in miracles. He also states that ‘ for some extraordinary reason, there is a fixed notion that it is more liberal to disbelieve in miracles than to believe in them.’² He shows the fallacy of this notion by pointing out that things that ‘the old science frankly has rejected as miracles are hourly being asserted by the new science.’ He emphasizes the role the ‘new theology’ played in creating the present state of affairs. Higher criticism had stripped away the faith of many in miracles, prophecies, and the future as portrayed by the Bible. The union between the two was unquestionable. Chesterton correctly stated, “The man of the nineteenth century did not disbelieve in the Resurrection because his liberal Christianity allowed him to doubt it. He disbelieved in it because his very strict materialism did not allow him to believe it.”³

            Chesterton is right when he says, “The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.”⁴ We will be looking at this statement from a historical point. He is also right when he observes that ‘it is we Christians who accept all actual evidence, it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed.’⁵

            Dr. Norman Geisler⁶ gives an excellent analysis for the arguments for and against the case for miracles, as do others who have written volumes on Systematic Theology and Apologetics. (Charles Hodge, Louis Berkhof, Wayne Grudem, Lewis S. Chafer, C. S. Lewis and Lee Strobel is just a few examples). The following are excerpts from Dr. Geisler’s analysis.

            Some describe a miracle as a ‘portent that is not contrary to nature, but contrary to our understanding of nature. Some others define a miracle as an event that is beyond nature’s power to produce and that only a supernatural power can do. As such, a miracle is a divine intervention into the natural world. Even atheists like Anthony Flew acknowledged that ‘a miracle is something which would never have happened had the nature, as it were, been left to its own devices.’⁷

            Since the time of the renaissance, many philosophers have raised objections to the possibility of miracles. One such philosopher who had a great influence on many others was Baruch Spinoza. He insisted that ‘nothing comes to pass in nature in contravention to her universal laws…for she keeps a fixed and immutable order.’⁸ Spinoza considered miracles as violations of natural laws, and therefore impossible. Spinoza lived in an age when people were finding out more about the universe for the first time and were impressed with the orderliness of the universe. So for a thinker like Spinoza, who made his deductions based on the conclusions contained in the axioms of Euclid’s geometry, natural laws were immutable and therefore, miracles impossible.

            Upon closer analysis, one realizes that there are issues with Spinoza’s deductions. For example, Spinoza considers the universe to be a closed system where everything must behave according to the natural law of gravity. But today we know that the universe is an open system in which natural laws are merely statistical averages of the way things do behave. Max Planck’s Quantum Theory has completely revolutionized the way physicists look at the universe today.

            Spinoza’s theology also denied him room for miracles. He was a pantheist who believed God was coterminous with nature and a miracle as an act of a God beyond nature cannot occur. Supernatural intervention is possible only in a theistic universe. If a thinker or scientist accept the Big Bang theory and agree that there was a beginning for the universe, then they are forced to accept the possibility of a Creator God who has authority over His creation and miracles thereby becomes possible.

            These arguments bring to mind Chesterton’s observation that the disbelievers deny miracles, not based on evidence, but because they have a doctrine against them.

            David Hume boasted that he has found a proof which would, once and for all, put to rest all the arguments for the supernatural. His proof was like this: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; firm and unalterable experience has established these laws. Therefore, the proof against a miracle…is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Since a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle.”⁹ It is clear that Hume’s proof is based on ‘uniform experience’ and he argues that since miracles are ‘exceptions’ there is no room for miracles. If it an argument that unusual or exceptional facts are not facts and only usual or regular facts are facts, it is not a relevant argument at all, since all of us in our day-to-day life encounter exceptional situations, the reality of which no one can deny. C. S. Lewis’s answer to Hume was that ‘the alternative to circular arguing on the question of the existence of miracles is to be open to the possibility that miracles have occurred.’¹⁰

            One can also argue that Hume did not weigh the evidence for miracles. He only added the evidence against miracles. For example, Hume argues against the resurrection. He said, “It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden because such a kind of death has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.”¹¹ From his writings it is clear that Hume never took time to weigh the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. He only considers the fact that millions of people have died and they never resurrected. Thus we can say that according to Hume, truth is determined by a majority vote.

            David Hume also influenced many thinkers who came after him. For example, Antony Flew argues against miracles on the ground that they are not repeatable (like a scientific experiment in a lab). Natural events are regular and repeatable, whereas miracles are exceptions and not repeatable.

            Here again, we have to reconsider the statement by Chesterton that ‘we Christians accept all actual evidence, it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed.’ (cited above).

            Miracles can be disproved only if we can disprove a theistic God. Since that is an unending argument, a Christian has no reason to reject the accounts of miracles in the Bible. The argument by Hume that such stories have not happened in other nations during antiquity is worth considering since other major religions of the world do not give the same emphasis to miracles as the Bible does. The answer to that argument is that the Bible presents us the story of a people through whom God had decided to reveal Himself since the time of Abraham, which allowed them to have a unique relationship with God throughout history. The backbone of Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the evidence for that as a historical event is overwhelming.

 

¹Chesterton, G. K. (2011). Orthodoxy, p. 179. Overland Park, KS, Digireads.com Publishing. http://www.digireads.com

²ibid. p.180.

³ ibid. p.182

⁴ ibid. p.186.

⁵ Ibid. p.216.

⁶ Geisler, N. L. (2002). Systematic Theology, volume one: p. 43-56. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers.

⁷ Quoted by Geisler. ibid. p 44

⁸ Quoted by Geisler. ibid. p 51

⁹ Quoted by Geisler. ibid. p 53

¹⁰ Lewis, C. S. (2015). Miracles: p.105. New York, NY: Harper One Publishers.

¹¹ Quoted by Geisler. ibid. p 56.