Philosophy of Miracles

Meaning and Origins

The philosophy of miracles is the branch of philosophy that asks what a miracle is, whether miracles are possible, and whether reports of miracles can ever be credible. It sits at the intersection of the philosophy of God and the philosophy of science, because the question of miracles is ultimately a question about the relationship between divine action and natural law. If God exists and created the natural order, can God also intervene in it? Or does the regularity of nature rule out the miraculous by definition?

The modern debate was framed by David Hume, whose essay "Of Miracles" (1748) is the most influential philosophical treatment of the subject. Hume defined a miracle as "a violation of the laws of nature" and argued that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, because the evidence for the uniformity of natural law always outweighs the evidence of any report of its violation. A wise person, Hume concluded, proportions belief to evidence, and since the evidence for natural law is overwhelming and the evidence for any particular miracle is merely testimonial, the wise person will always reject miracle reports.

Hume's argument set the terms for everything that followed. Theists have tried to show that Hume's definition is wrong, that his evidential principle is question-begging, or that the probability calculus doesn't work the way he claimed. Atheists and naturalists have taken Hume's side, arguing that the very concept of a miracle is incoherent or that miracle reports are never to be trusted. The contemporary debate is more nuanced than Hume's stark formulation, but his shadow is inescapable.

Core Ideas

The Definition of Miracle

What is a miracle? Hume defined it as "a violation of the laws of nature," but this definition has been widely challenged. The problem is that "violation" suggests law-breaking, which carries a negative moral connotation and implies that God is overriding the natural order. If God created the natural order, why would God need to violate it?

Alternative definitions are gentler. Augustine defined a miracle as an event that is "portentous" — not contrary to nature but contrary to what is known of nature. On this view, a miracle is not a violation of natural law but an event whose natural explanation we don't yet possess. Aquinas defined a miracle as an event caused by God outside the order commonly observed in nature — a definition that doesn't require a violation but simply a different cause. Richard Swinburne defines a miracle as an event caused by God that is not explicable by natural laws. On these definitions, a miracle is not a law-breaking but a divine intervention — God acting in a way that produces an effect the natural order would not produce on its own.

The definition matters because it affects the argument. If a miracle is a "violation" of natural law, then the very concept may be incoherent — if a law is genuinely a law, it can't be violated. If a miracle is simply an event with a divine cause, then the concept is coherent and the question becomes whether such events actually occur.

Hume's Argument Against Miracles

Hume's argument, in compressed form, runs as follows. A miracle is a violation of natural law. The evidence for natural law comes from uniform experience — every time we drop a stone, it falls. The evidence for a miracle comes from testimony — someone says they saw a dead man rise. The wise person proportions belief to evidence. The evidence for the uniformity of natural law is overwhelming; the evidence for any particular miracle is the testimony of a few witnesses. Therefore, the wise person should always reject the miracle report, because the prior probability of the law is always greater than the probability of the testimony being accurate.

Hume's argument is a Bayesian argument avant la lettre. It says that the prior probability of a miracle is so low — given the uniformity of natural law — that no amount of testimony can overcome it. Even if a million people report seeing a resurrection, the evidence that the dead stay dead is stronger than the evidence of the million reports.

The argument has been challenged on several fronts. Swinburne argues that Hume's principle is too strong — it would rule out any surprising event, not just miracles, since surprising events are by definition improbable given our background knowledge. Earl of I-God (John Earman) has argued that Hume's Bayesian reasoning is flawed: Hume assumes that the prior probability of a miracle is vanishingly small, but if God exists and has reasons to act miraculously, the prior probability may not be so low. The question, in other words, can't be settled without addressing the prior question of whether God exists — which is the question of the philosophy of God.

Laws of Nature and Divine Intervention

The concept of a miracle depends on the concept of a law of nature, and this concept has its own philosophical difficulties. What is a law of nature? Is it a description of what happens (a regularity), or a prescription of what must happen (a necessity)? If laws are just descriptions, then a "violation" is not a metaphysical impossibility but simply an event that doesn't fit the pattern. If laws are necessities, then a violation is genuinely impossible — not because God can't do it, but because the concept is incoherent.

The regularity view of laws, associated with Hume himself, holds that a law of nature is simply a description of what has always been observed to happen. On this view, a miracle is possible: it's just an event that falls outside the regular pattern. The necessitarian view, associated with philosophers like David Lewis, holds that laws express genuine modal necessities. On this view, a miracle is harder to make sense of, because if the laws are necessary, nothing can happen that violates them.

The theistic response is to argue that laws of nature are not self-existent necessities but descriptions of how God ordinarily sustains the world. God can, if God chooses, sustain the world differently — producing an event that falls outside the ordinary pattern. This is not a "violation" but a different mode of divine action. The debate connects to the question of divine action — whether God acts in the world only through general providence (sustaining the natural order) or also through special interventions.

The Probability of Miracles

Contemporary debate has shifted from the question of whether miracles are possible to the question of whether they are probable. Swinburne has argued that if God exists, God has reasons to perform miracles — to reveal the divine nature, to authenticate prophets, to respond to prayer. If God exists and has these reasons, then the prior probability of miracles is not vanishingly low but moderate. Given moderate prior probability, strong testimony can make a miracle report credible.

The probability calculus depends on background assumptions. If you assume naturalism — that the natural world is all there is — then miracles have a prior probability of zero, and no testimony can overcome it. But this is question-begging: it assumes what the miracle report is supposed to establish. If you leave open the possibility of God, then the probability of a miracle depends on the evidence for God, the evidence for the specific miracle report, and the prior probability of God having reasons to act miraculously. The philosophy of miracles, in other words, can't be separated from the philosophy of God.

Miracles and Scientific Explanation

A final question is whether miracles are incompatible with science. The worry is that if we allow miracles, we open the door to "God of the gaps" reasoning — explaining what we don't understand by appealing to divine intervention, and then retreating as science fills the gap. The history of science gives reason for caution: events once attributed to divine action (lightning, disease, planetary motion) have turned out to have natural explanations.

The theistic response is that miracles are not explanations of the unexplained but specific events with specific religious significance. A miracle is not "we don't know how this happened, so God did it" but "this event, in this context, with this significance, is best explained as divine action." The resurrection of Jesus, on this view, is not a gap-filler but a specific event with a specific religious meaning that the theist takes to be caused by God. The debate is not about whether science will eventually explain everything — it may or may not — but about whether some events are best explained by divine action.

The Philosophy of Miracles and the Wider Conversation

The philosophy of miracles is one thread in the larger fabric of the philosophy of religion. It connects directly to the philosophy of God — the question of whether miracles are possible depends on whether God exists, and the question of whether miracle reports are credible depends on whether God has reasons to act miraculously. It connects to the philosophy of faith, which asks whether belief in God can be rational — if miracles occur, they would be evidence for God. It relates to the philosophy of atheism, which argues that natural law is sufficient and that miracle reports are never to be trusted. And it touches the philosophy of religious experience, since some religious experiences are reported in the context of miraculous events. The religion, God, and the sacred collection gathers these threads into a complete learning path.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Miracles."
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Philosophy of Religion."
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "David Hume."
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Laws of Nature."
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Divine Action."