Chapter 69
Miracles: wonders beyond the course of nature taken as signs of divine power; their credibility, purpose and evidence.
398 passages · 182 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
A miracle, as the Harvard Classics present it, is a wonder that goes beyond the ordinary course of nature and is taken as a sign that divine power is at work. The idea raises three questions at once. The first is metaphysical: how such a wonder stands to the order of nature. The second concerns purpose: why God should act outside that order. The third concerns evidence: how anyone could know that such a thing happened. Few ideas run so fully across these volumes. Psalmists and evangelists recount wonders. Homer, Virgil and the Buddhist scriptures surround gods and holy men with prodigies. Pascal builds an apologetic on miracles, Hume a famous argument against believing reports of them, and Emerson and Whitman a reinterpretation that dissolves the particular miracle into the miracle of existence itself. Romancers, dramatists and memoirists use the word loosely for rescue, survival or marvellous skill. Following the idea through these books means following the long negotiation between faith, nature and testimony.
The sharpest definition is Hume’s. A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and because those laws rest on uniform experience, that experience is a full proof against any miracle1. Earlier formulations frame the matter differently. Butler, quoted by George Long, calls the natural what is stated and settled, and the miraculous what an intelligent agent effects at once2. Pascal defines a miracle as an effect exceeding the natural power of the means employed3. Renan contrasts the Celtic sense of the marvellous, which is diffused through nature, with the monotheistic one, for which a marvel is a derogation of eternal laws produced directly by God4. Calderón’s King Basilio allows that God may by miracle overrule even what the stars foretell5. By Darwin’s time the word has become chiefly a term of reproach. To suppose abrupt transformations of species is to enter “the realms of miracle” and leave science behind6,7. Even here Darwin recalls that Leibnitz once accused Newton’s gravity of bringing miracles into philosophy8.
Against this sharp opposition of nature and miracle stands a tradition that finds the greater wonder in the ordinary world. Job’s speakers already call rain, thunder and snow God’s marvellous works past finding out9,10. Browne holds that all miracles are equal to God’s power and that creation itself is the greatest miracle11. He adds that the Deluge is no greater wonder than that there is not always one12. Descartes speaks of the “miracle of creation” and denies that forming the world by natural laws would discredit it13. Bacon draws a polemical conclusion: God never wrought a miracle to convince an atheist, because his ordinary works suffice14.
The nineteenth-century writers press this view until the particular miracle disappears. Emerson says Jesus spoke of miracles as man’s daily life, and that the churches’ “miracle” is a monster set apart from the blowing clover and the rain15. In the universal miracle of divine presence, petty miracles vanish16, and the world is the perennial miracle the soul works17. Whitman declares supernatural miracle inadmissible under universal law, and every ordinary thing itself a miracle18. Carlyle insists that the age of miracles “now is”19.
A neighbouring question is whether a natural explanation destroys a wonder’s meaning. Plutarch’s story of the one-horned ram gives an early and generous answer. Anaxagoras explained its natural cause and Lampon read it as a portent, and Plutarch holds that both were right20. Browne is more anxious. He treats natural explanations of the brazen serpent, Elijah’s fire and the manna as the Devil’s way of breeding infidelity21,22. The moderns tell a story of steady dissolution. The rainbow was once an inexplicable miracle until De Dominis and Descartes explained it23. Lyell argues that supposed prodigies yield to fixed laws, and that the uniformity of nature teaches philosophers to reject fabulous accounts of the past24. Hume observes that the vulgar invoke an invisible cause only for extraordinary events, while philosophers extend divine causation to every event25.
On purpose, the scriptural texts speak plainly. Peter tells the Pentecost crowd that Jesus was approved by God through mighty works, wonders and signs26. Signs are granted through the apostles as witness to the word27. Hobbes makes this the only testimony of a divine calling, noting that Israel’s faith failed when its miracles failed28. Bacon counts signs and miracles among the ways new sects are planted29, and his New Atlantis is converted by a pillar of light and a cross at sea30. More’s Utopians honour miracles as witnesses of God’s present power31.
The Psalms add a second purpose, education and remembrance. The wonders of the Exodus are to be retold, and Israel’s forgetting of them is its sin32,33,34. Luther recalls how children ignorant of their fathers’ miracles fell into idolatry35. Lessing reads the Egyptian wonders as an education of the Hebrews toward belief in one God, mightier than other gods36,37. A third purpose is judgment. Zacharias is struck dumb for doubting the angel38, and Ananias and Sapphira fall dead before Peter39,40.
Whether miracles actually convert is the most persistent controversy. In Luke, Jesus refuses a sign-seeking generation any sign but Jonah’s41 and gives Herod no spectacle42. Augustine condemns demanding wonders merely to test God43. Thomas à Kempis notes that many marvel at Christ’s miracles but few follow him to the Cross44. Milton shows the rebel angels hardened rather than moved by the Messiah’s display of power45. Browne thinks those who saw the Red Sea had faith thrust upon them, so that unseen belief is the greater blessing46.
Pascal gives this line its strongest form. Those who say they would believe had they seen a miracle cannot know it, since conversion is self-annihilation before God47. The mind would find exceptions and explain the wonder away48. Miracles therefore condemn rather than convert49,50. Emerson agrees on the inadequacy of wonders and draws an opposite conclusion: converting a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul51. Goethe’s Faust, hearing the Easter chorus, confesses weak faith and calls miracle faith’s darling child, born of belief rather than producing it52. Dante supplies the boldest reversal. If the world was converted without miracles, that conversion would itself be the greatest miracle53.
Hume’s argument concentrates the question of evidence. He begins from Tillotson’s point that testimony is weaker than sense54. He then holds that no testimony establishes a miracle unless its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact, and that no historical miracle has had such witnesses55. Love of wonder and enthusiasm make people credulous56. Forged miracles abound57. Miracle stories flourish among ignorant peoples and fade with enlightenment58. Rival religions’ miracles cancel one another59. He presses his rule against the strongest cases he can find: Vespasian’s cures as attested by Tacitus, the Saragossa doorkeeper’s restored leg, and the healings at the Abbé Paris’s tomb before judges60,61,62. In every case the miraculous character of the event is reason enough to reject it. He grants that a universal eight-day darkness might be credible, but denies that any testimony could prove a miracle as the foundation of a religion63. He concludes that Christian belief is itself a continued miracle subverting the understanding64.
Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar reaches similar doubts by another road. Miracles reach us only through human books and witnesses65. Impostors stage them before few66. God is best shown in nature’s fixed order67. The testimony of nations cannot override reason68. Long’s historical notes show the problem at work in practice. He weighs the doubtful evidence of the Thundering Legion69, and he records church historians quietly omitting the dove said to have issued from Polycarp’s body70.
Pascal had already confronted most of these objections, and his answers form the great counterweight. Miracles and prophecy are not absolutely convincing, yet it is not unreasonable to believe them71. Prophecy is a lasting miracle that outlives the original wonders72,73. Against Hume’s cancelling of rival claims, Pascal argues that Mahomet worked no miracles and was not foretold74. He holds that false miracles exist only because true ones do, as false remedies presuppose real cures75,76. Above all he holds that miracles and doctrine judge each other77,78. A miracle must be accepted unless it denies God, Christ or the Church79. God would not let a hidden enemy work open miracles80. Without a rule for judging them, miracles would be useless81.
The rule cut both ways in the confessional quarrels of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Luther holds that any wonder favouring the Pope is the devil’s work, citing the lying signs foretold by Paul, and that shrine miracles prove nothing82,83. Calvin argues that miracles only confirm sound doctrine, and he calls his adversaries’ saintly miracles Satanic illusions84,85. Pascal turns the same rule against the Jesuits. He claims the healings of the Holy Thorn at Port-Royal as God’s own work86,87, and he complains that enemies evade such miracles by insisting that doctrine must judge them88. Another criterion is holiness. Thomas à Kempis says that without grace even the working of miracles is worthless89, and Emerson tells how Philip Neri exposed a nun’s pretended gifts by her lack of humility90.
Saints’ wonders receive the full range of response. Dante reports Francis’s stigmata91, and Caxton translates the Golden Legend for the edification of the unlettered92. Manzoni’s friar tells the miracle of the nuts, by which a barren walnut tree bore fruit and the scoffer’s store withered93. Browne believes miracles may still be worked by the living but distrusts relics as pious fraud94. Cervantes’ canon condemns playwrights who invent miracles or transfer one saint’s miracles to another95. Macaulay’s Italians saw the Church’s miracles from close by as stage machinery96. In Malory’s Grail quest wonders mark election and judgment. Galahad draws the sword from the floating stone97, and a sick knight is healed by the Grail while the sinful Launcelot cannot stir98. Later the Grail’s fiery breath strikes Launcelot down99. Renan traces the Grail back to a Celtic cauldron of healing100.
Outside scripture, prodigies serve as omens rather than proofs. Zeus sends eagles in answer to Telemachus’s prayer101. Virgil’s bleeding myrtle speaks with Polydore’s voice102. Plutarch records palms splitting stone before Caesar’s victory, though he dismisses some portents as unworthy of notice103,104. Homer’s Athene transforms Odysseus so that Telemachus fears he is a god105. In Euripides the Bacchantes strike water and wine from rock106. The Buddha’s enlightenment makes the blind see and the deaf hear107. Krishna grants Arjuna divine sight of his cosmic form108. The Koran tells of Jesus’ miracles worked by God’s permission, which unbelievers dismissed as magic109. Pagan antiquity also knew fraud. Themistocles staged a vanished temple serpent110, Juturna contrived a false omen111, and Marcus Aurelius learned not to credit jugglers and exorcists112. Browne, for his part, counts the cessation of the oracles itself as an indisputable miracle113.
Finally, the word spreads into the language of providence and of plain hyperbole. Roper calls the recovery of More’s daughter a manifest miraculous token114. Schiller’s fisherman sees the Lord’s hand in Tell’s escape115. Manzoni’s tailor holds that the Lord never begins a miracle without a good end116. Edgar persuades Gloucester that the gods saved him by a miracle117. Cellini calls his perfect bronze casting a miracle arranged by God’s hand118, and Sancho speaks of becoming a king “through some miracle”119.
Several questions remain open across these books. One is whether a miracle is a breach of nature or nature’s deepest expression. Another is whether wonders ground faith or presuppose it. A third is whether testimony can ever carry their weight. Lessing perhaps marks the modern turn most quietly. He grants that Christ’s miracles made him a certain teacher in his own time, but he holds that whether they can still be proved no longer bears on the truth of the doctrine120.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: God 6b
See also: Prophecy 8a · Religion 3c
See also: Medicine 6a · Race and Nationality 7d · Sin 8b
See also: Reasoning 6b · Experience 3c
See also: Religion 3c
See also: Judgment 5c · Religion 3c
See also: Religion 3c · Prophecy 8e
See also: Prophecy 8e
See also: Judgment 5c · Religion 3c
See also: Religion 3c
See also: Chivalry 6a · Prophecy 5c · Sign and Symbol 5c · Religion 7b
See also: Prophecy 4b · Religion 5a
See also: God 11a
See also: Religion 14d
See also: God 7b
See also: Religion, Prophecy, God, Angel, Sign and Symbol, Chivalry