AMDG

The One God Essay 4 Toby Lees OP

Can miracles happen? Do they? If so, how and why? What do they
mean?

The opening verse to Queens 1989 song, The Miracle, goes as follows:
Every drop of rain that falls in Sahara Desert says it all,
It's a miracle,
All God's creations great and small, the Golden Gate and the Taj Mahal,
That's a miracle,
Test tube babies being born, mothers, fathers dead and gone,
It's a miracle,
We're having a miracle on earth, mother nature does it all for us,
The wonders of this world go on, the hanging Gardens of Babylon,
Captain Cook and Cain and Able, Jimi Hendrix to the Tower of Babel
It's a miracle, it's a miracle, it's a miracle, it's a miracle . . . .
The immediate lesson is dont let your research on theology stop with pop songs,
even from bands with a lead guitarist with PhD in Astrophysics from Imperial
College, London. However, the song as well as being pretty catchy does
neatly illustrate a modern tendency to reduce our talk about miracles to things
which amaze us, but the causes of which do not perplex us. As we shall go on to
see in this essay, Aquinas, and others, do indeed believe that miracles induce
wonder and admiration, but not for Mother Nature (aka the Laws of Nature), but
rather for God.
Hume, perhaps the most famous refuter of miracles of all-time, had a better
grasp of what a miracle might be defined as, if the term is to mean anything
more than an utterance of wonder. In his essay Of Miracles he defines miracles
in a footnote as: A transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the
deity or by the interposition of some invisible agent. 1
This is a definition which a Christian can work with, even if I will ultimately argue,
that is incomplete. This first half of the definition captures the basic
1

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 1977

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understanding that whilst the miracle occurs in the natural world, under normal
circumstances, the event in question cannot be understood according to our
normal understanding of natural causes. The second half of the definition reflects
the common understanding that in the absence of a natural cause we ascribe the
agent outside of the normal realm of natural causes: most commonly to God.
Most discussion of miracles focuses on the first half of this definition. Those
arguing against the occurrence and sometimes the very possibility - seeking to
show that in fact transgressions of nature do not occur, and those arguing for,
seeking to show that they can, do and have. Both sides seem to accept that if
transgressions of the law of nature occur then we must in fact posit some
supernatural cause.
As we will go on to discuss transgression of a law of nature is not a necessary
requirement of a miracle and it should also be noted that laws of nature is
something that conveys more of a gist than a technical concept. For example is it
a law of nature that the dead remain dead? Furthermore it is very difficult to
actually say what the laws of nature are and how one would prove that the law
had been violated as opposed to the law simply being an inaccurate description
of the reality it was meant to describe. Following on from this can such laws
actually be said to exist or are they in fact inherently revisable descriptions of
reality, and so not capable of transgression, but only of being found insufficient?
In fact, as we will see when we look at what Aquinas has to say about miracles,
we will see that he admits of different degrees of miraculosity(sic) 2, but what I
think we can take from Humes definition is a sense of a miracle being something
that is inexplicable without recourse to a supernatural explanation.
Given a working definition, we shall now look at whether it is possible to argue
that miracles do in fact occur and I hope, in the process, to rebut some of the
most common arguments against their being possible.
2

There is a grey line in deciding what is miraculous at the lower end of the gradation,
particular with natural phenomena surprising us, e.g. a snap change in the weather, or
being about to give up fishing and then hauling in your largest catch ever. In such events
our determination of whether a miracle has occurred is likely to depend on surrounding
circumstances, e.g. a prayer for the exact same thing in the preceding instant, and our
attitude to the possibility of miracles. However, up the upper end of the scale, if a man
could be proved to have been clinically dead for three days and then to have risen, most
would admit this was miraculous, and if they didnt believe in miracles would seek to
argue that the man was never actually dead, rather than deny that if he has risen from
the dead, then a miracle has, in fact, occurred.

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Anthony Flew had the following to say: The occurrence of a genuine miracle is,
by definition, naturally impossible.3
This captures what I think is a key component of Humes argument, and that of
many others; it is not just that they argue that miracles do not occur, but in fact
they cannot. For if we admit of nothing other than the natural, then it seems
obvious that we will never admit of a supernatural explanation, and thus our
thinking is limited to the natural, miracles are impossible. They can either be
explained by current science 4 or one adopts, the seeming faith position, of saying
that we might not be explain - without recourse to the supernatural - the
phenomena at present, but we will be able to in the future. One might observe
the similarities in this line of argumentation to the God of gaps argument which
is subject to such derision from those who would advance a naturalistic
explanation, just not yet.
Flews comment is also instructive for what it does not say, for we can see that
he does not say that miracles are not possible, simply that they are not natural,
which is what those who argue for miracles would want to argue in any event.

Most of those who argue for and against miracles do though agree that not only
is there regularity in the universe, but that there is also something deeply
embedded into the structure of the world that accounts for the regularity of
phenomena.
The conception of reality is really at the crux of the matter. What differs between
the two groups though is the size of the reality of which they are prepared to
admit. Whilst living in the same day to day reality the conceptions of the
materialist (a common philosophical position of many miracle sceptics) of reality
and that of the believer are radically different. As Chesterton says:
As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity . . . we
have the sense of it covering everything and the sense of leaving everything
out . . . he understands everything and yet everything does not seem worth
3

Habermas, GR and AGN Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? San Francisco. Harper and
Row. 1987, p.6
4

Attempts to explain away the phenomena of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima are a good
example of this

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understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but
still his cosmos is smaller than our world . . . . The earth is so very large and the
cosmos so very small.
Contrasting the materialist position with his own Christian perspective he carries
on:
Mr McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in
determinism. I think Mr McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in
fairies. But if we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is really much
more of a pure veto than mine. The Christian is quite free to believe that there is
a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the
universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine
the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. The Christian admits that the
universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as the same man knows that
he is complex. . . . Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do
materialistic denials.5
Those who argue against the possibility of miracles, even when, like Hume, they
reject metaphysics, are adopting a metaphysical position which rejects the
possibility of miracles. The further irony for someone like Hume is that he has to
do this at the cost of consistent empiricism. He argues against our forming a
concept of cause and effect in the mind, when in fact all we observe is
contiguous events A then B, not A causing B but then constructs an
intellectual framework in which we may have to deny our senses to maintain the
framework.
Hume points out that is part and parcel of being reasonable, being rational, to
accept that the world is orderly and predictable. So Hume concludes that its
always more reasonable to suppose that something has gone wrong with the
evidence, with what we observe and that it would never really be possible to
have overwhelming evidence in favour of having observed a miracle.
Aidan Nichols OP makes a similar point to Chesterton when he asks the following
question of those like Hume:
The question to put to Hume, and to all who reject miracles, is this: what kind of
order, in the last analysis is the order of the world? Only by answering that
5

GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy. Landisville, Coachwhip Publications, 2009, p.182-3

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question can we find our way to the kind of rationality appropriate to

understanding an orderly world. Might it not be the case that the order of the
world is ultimately the order of the purposes of a good God, a loving God, who
has chosen to intervene in history so as to draw human beings to Him? If that is
the order of the world, then a miracle might be supremely orderly: it might fit in
beautifully with the long-term or structural purposes of the Creator. And only
biblical thought, then, would be adequate to living in such a world where God is
active. So a miracle is thinkable after all. It is an event unusual but by no
means [necessarily] unknown where the personal God intervenes in nature so
as to show us his hand, to give us a direct glimpse of his goals in history.
At this point in the essay I hope to have shown that those who argue against the
possibility of miracles do so on the back of prior commitments and not primarily
because of insufficient evidence for the existence of miracles. Rather it is the
prior commitments which prevent an open-minded investigation of the evidence,
i.e. a mindset other than (i) we cant explain it now . . . . (ii) but there have been
other things that we didnt understand and can now provide a natural
explanation for . . . (iii) therefore we will necessarily be able to explain it
naturally in the future.6
I cannot prove that there are miracles any more than the atheist can prove that
there is not a God. Where current knowledge is limited, it is not possible to show
definitively that some action transcends the laws of nature. However, there is
one positive proof connected to miraculous occurrences which it is harder for the
sceptic to ignore, namely, the circumstances surrounding the occurrence of the
miracle. For if most cases of a seemingly miraculous occurrence are
accompanied by religious phenomena such as intercession, relics, Mass petitions,
then the sceptic has to argue for why there are more unexplainable
6

GKC illustrates how this position is just as boxed in as any extreme empiricism
or idealism:
The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe
anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in
their argument but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both
locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and the stars;
they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of
heaven, the other even into the health and the happiness of earth. Their position
is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular. But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base
and slavish eternity.
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circumstances surrounding religious observance. Lourdes and its concentration

of miraculous healings is one such example.
CS Lewis summarises my principal argument thus far as follows:
The question whether miracles occur never be answered by experience. Every
event which might claim to be a miracle, is in the last resort, something
presented to our senses [or at least those who witness it], something seen,
heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything
extraordinary happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an
illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we
shall always say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of
philosophy we bring to experience.7
I shall now turn to look at miracles in more theological vein, after this
predominantly philosophical treatment above. In order to do so, I shall first
examine Aquinas thought on the matter, before supplementing it with some
other considerations.
Aquinas thought of Gods providence as a matter of God governing the course of
creation and that God brings about events by causes which operate in the world,
and thus he considered the question of miracles under the question of whether
God can do anything outside the established order of things. 8
As Davies explains the positive answer to the question of the possibility of
miracles, for Aquinas, follows on from his arguments on the topic of Gods
omnipotence: since God can bring about whatever does not involve a
contradiction, he can bring about things which would not be expected in terms of
what normally happens, and he can do so directly and without the use of
secondary causes.9 As St Thomas himself says the divine will is not limited to
this particular order of causes and effects in such a manner that is unable to will
to produce immediately an effect in things here below without using another
cause.10 In the order of secondary causes he can do something outside the
normal order for it is subject to Him and not vice versa, it proceeds from Him not
7

CS Lewis, Miracles. London, Fontana Books, 1947, p.7

ST 1a 105.5

Brian Davies OP, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, p.170

10

SG 3.99.6

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by necessity, but by virtue of His willing it to be so. He could have created

another order of things, and so He can, for example, choose to produce the
effects of secondary causes without them, or produce certain effects to which
secondary effects do not extend.11
This line of argument ought to give pause to thought to the Christians who
believe that God created the world ex nihilo, but then think it impossible that He
should perform miracles. He refutes one aspect of their argument - which is often
that miracles require change in God, which is impossible - when he says: In
creating the natural order, God also reserved to Himself whatever He intended to
do otherwise than by a particular cause. So when he acts outside this order, He
does not change.12
Aquinas goes on to argue in a further article of the same question that whatever
God does outside the natural order is miraculous: whatever God does outside
the causes which we can know 13 and which cause wonder and admiration are
miracles. We might call this his description of the wrapper of a miracle, its
superficial appearance.
What then does he think a miracle consists of? He says that in miraculous works
we may find three things:
(i) They are the work of Divine power; they are wondrous since their cause is
hidden; they are done by God alone14; and that every work that can be
done by God alone is miraculous15;

11

ST 1a 105.5

12

Ibid

13

One might argue that this argument should be future-proofed by the addition of or
could ever know; as things that are seemingly miraculous may in hindsight no longer
appear to be so. However, conversely if our definition of the miraculous does not require
a deviation from the normal operation of nature then it could just be the circumstances of
the occurrence that make it miraculous even though we know how such things happen.
14

We might ask what about the miracles performed by the Apostles and other saints?
Thomas comments that saints work miracles sometimes by prayer, other times by
authority, but in each case God is the principal worker. He uses man instrumentally either
by inward movement or speech, some other outward action, or even the bodily contact
of a dead body ST IIa-IIae 178
15

Creation though is not a miracle because it does not belong to the natural order at all,
ST 1a 105.7

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(ii) In some works, form is introduced beyond the natural power of such
matter, e.g. in the resurrection of the dead, where a corpse does not
possess the power normally of becoming a human being again; and
(iii)Something is found besides the usual and customary order of causing an
effect.
Aquinas thought that there were three kinds of miracle. There are (1) events in
which something is done by God which nature could never do, (2) events in
which God does something which nature can do, but not in this order, and (3)
that which occurs when God does what is usually done by the working of nature,
but without the operation of the principles of nature
What might then turn to ask to what effect God works miracles and what do they
mean?
Aquinas rightly comments that they help render the word of God more credible.
Just as it is natural for men to arrive at intelligible truth through sensible effects
and just as man obtain some knowledge of God through natural effects so he is
brought to a certain degree of supernatural knowledge of the objects of faith by
miracles.16
Miracles not only add surety to our faith, they can be worked by God to (i)
confirm a truth declared or (ii) as proof of a persons holiness, which God desires
to propose as an example of holiness. 17 Perhaps the most obvious example of (i)
above is how the miracles of Christ confirmed that He was who He said He was.
Thomas adds that since the things which are of faith surpass human reason, they
cannot be proved by human arguments but need to be proved by the argument
of divine power: so that when a man does works that God alone can do, we
may believe that what He says is from God. Thus Christ worked miracles in
order to confirm His doctrine and in order to show forth His Divine power 18.
Christs miracles not only served to demonstrate who He is, but also His mission.
For by his healing miracles in particular, He showed Himself to be the universal
and spiritual Saviour of all.19
16

ST IIa-IIae 178.1

17

Ibid 178.2

18

ST III 43

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However, there is one downside to miracles, which Thomas acknowledges and

for which Christ chastises in the Gospels (cf Mt 12:39), and this is that miracles
lessen the merit of faith, but nonetheless Thomas declares that it is better for
them to be converted to the faith even by miracles than that they should remain
altogether in unbelief.20
There is another aspect under which we can think of miracles and that is as
divine signs, not just as confirming us in our belief. In fact, this is the language of
St Johns Gospel, where the work semeion or sign is used to describe the
miraculous. In fact, when we add this dimension to our definition of a miracle it
can help us to distinguish within the whole range of inexplicable events whether
in fact a miracle has occurred and in particular in those cases where the
transcendence was not so complete as to definitively rule out some future
natural explanation. For as Fr John Hardon SJ comments: As long as miracles are
defined only in terms of transcendence, we have indeed a norm to distinguish
miraculous phenomena from extraordinary natural events. But the norm is
mostly negative, eliminating the presence of a natural agency. Whereas if we add
the concept of miracle as a divine sign, we have at hand an index to determine
the miraculous not only negatively, by the exclusion of nature, but positively, by
giving evidence of the purposeful presence of God. 21
Hardon then goes on to examine the reception of miracles in Scripture and
Tradition and notes that the first reaction of those who witnessed the miraculous
events in the New Testament was to recognise the special intervention of God.
One particular way in which this is discerned is by the presence of the religious
phenomena surrounding the event already discussed above, what Hardon refers
to as religious adjuncta.
He also points out that a logical correlative to miracles as signs of Gods special
intervention is their extraordinary manifestation of His perfection, notably His
power and wisdom, justice and mercy. For example when Daniel after prayer to
God understood Nebuchadnezzars dream, he said Blessed be the name of the
Lord from eternity and evermore; for wisdom and fortitude are his.
19

ST III 44

20

ST III 43

21

John Hardon, SJ, The Concept of Miracle from St Augustine to Modern Apologetics.
Accessed online http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Miracles/Miracles_003.htm on 3
November 2015

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It is falsehood to think of God as transgressing the laws of nature or as somehow

suspending them. This sort of thinking has Deist tendencies, whereby God has
set things up, and is now sitting back with his feet up, but every so often steps
into intervene. However, this is a very different picture to the classical
conception of God as being in a continuous act of creation and holding
everything in being. We can see how on this latter view, what we view as laws
are in fact what God normally causes to be, but that is not a transgression as
such for him to on occasion cause things to be otherwise. His Providence
includes the rarities and the normalities. I would suggest that we appreciate
both.
The normalities allow us a regular existence not permanently in fear of what
might happen next, the rarities are reminders and signs of his ceaseless love for
us. As Davies encapsulating Aquinas thought on the matter says: If God
miraculously brings about something in the created order, that is no more a
violation of the order than is the fact that this order exists in the first place. 22
Lazarus being resurrected is no more contrary to the created order than the
action of creatio ex nihilo and there being a universe for somebody to exist in to
be resurrected in.
Thus miracles are not occasions of God stepping in where he does not exist
already, but his presence being made to sparkle. Miracles at once narrow the gap
between God and us, and show how large the gap is. They are manifestations of
his immanent transcendence. Avery Dulles put it beautifully when he said, If
nature is Gods prose, miracles may perhaps be called His poetry 23.

22

Brian Davies OP, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. P.173

23

In Peter Stravinskas, Do you believe in miracles?.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/apologetics/do-you-believein-miracles.html accessed online on 4 November 2015.

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