05.01 - Miracles
REVELATION AND ITS EVIDENCES
PART V
I. MIRACLES
ONE of the most striking facts in the history of Apologetics is that what is use.l as an argument for the Christian faith at one time, is at another time placed in the list of things to be defended. This is the case with miracles and prophecy. Once regarded as among the strongest proofs and defences of Christian faith and Divine revelation, they require now to be defended. Miracles are said to be impossible or unverifiable, and as such incredible. This is attributable to several causes: (i) A mistaken conception of revelation regarded as a body of truth or system of doctrine Divinely communicated, which truths and doctrines being undiscoverable by human reason, required to be authenticated by supernatural powers, and signs. This, as we have shown, is not the burden and design of Divine revelation, which is not so much to make known truths and doctrines impossible to reason and inconceivable by the human mind, as to make conceivable possibilities of historical and indubitable facts, to make clear to thought God’s gracious purposes for the race, and show that purpose and thought as consistent with the character of God as Father and Redeemer, and carried to completion in the Person and work of Jesus Christ. Revelation is concerned with the facts of history rather than with the truths and doctrines connected with them and suggested by them. (2) An other cause is the erroneous conception of the true nature and function of miracles, and the ambiguous terms used in describing them. Miracles have been defined as “suspensions “ or “violations of the order and laws of nature,” by the immediate intervention of God, for the purpose of accrediting some agent or teacher so as to certify his action and authenticate his teaching. It was this conception of miracles Hume controverted in his famous argument from experience.
Against the possibility of miracles as a violation of the laws and order of nature grounded on human testimony, Hume argued Experience proves the laws and order of nature to be inviolable, while human testimony has often been proved false, and that human testimony was more likely to be false than that miracles ever occurred, and so miracles were declared impossible and incredible. Reject Hume’s premises, and you will necessarily reject his conclusion. This is what modern Apologetics does. Apologetics not only rejects the conclusion as illogical experience being used in a double sense but it also rejects the definition of miracle as a “ suspension or violation of the order and laws of nature,” and holds with modern scientists that the order and laws of nature are fixed and inviolable, and that miracle takes place apart from the fixed order of nature and contrary to that order; it being the action of a superior power or first cause which operates to produce a certain effect. Miracle is the direct action of a super natural power to produce a particular effect which the order of nature by itself would not accomplish. We do not say that God “ suspends “ or “ abrogates “natural law or order, but Me uses it sometimes to work His own will and purpose. What is thus superior to the order of nature is as Augustine has pointed out “ What God by direct intervention effect-, and which nature working in its ordinary way would not accomplish.” Divine and intelligent Power uses nature for working out his own purposes much the same as human power and intelligence use it for the accomplishment of ends and purposes which nature, left to itself, would not effect. God does not necessarily work apart from nature and secondary causes, since He may use these to accomplish His specific purpose; but His action is not less real and immediate when He works by the use of secondary causes than when He operates without them.
God immanent in nature is not less Divine than God transcendent; and both arc possible.