Introduction to Miracles

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What is a miracle?

A miracle is an event that defies the laws of nature and cannot be explained by science.

The word 'miracle' comes from

the Latin wonder 'miraculum' meaning, ‘wonder’.

Miracles are different to other religious experiences because they are public experiences, which are more widely observable to others.

However, miracles are heavily attacked by arguments from science, as they break the rules of nature.

Miracles are extraordinary events that show the exuberance of God.

Religious people think that these events are supernaturally caused by God.

They argue that if He can make a miracle happen, then He must exist.

It also has been said that miracles show God as omnipotent and good.

Experiencing or witnessing a miracle can strengthen the belief of those who already believe in God.

Examples of miracles:

Modern Day:

people with terminal illnesses living longer than doctors say they would

blind man getting out of the Twin Towers by his guide dog, when others in the same room didn't make it

some surviving Thailand's tsunami standing on the beach

multi-car pile up on the A249, no one is killed

Biblical:

walking on water

feeding of 5000

turning water into wine

Jesus' resurrection

Types of miracles:

Natural miracles

Healing miracles

Exorcisms

Life after death

Revision Notes

Defining Miracles:

There is a distinct difference between the Old and New Testaments in terms of credibility. The Old Testament is written in a way that mimics mythical stories and legends, often elaborating into entertaining detail, and focusing around descriptive powers rather than empirical fact. By contrast, the New Testament includes eye-witness accounts of miraculous events, and is more historically credible, as all of the gospel writers are historically documented.

The Gospel writers claim a variety of miracles to have happened in the New Testament, and if one is going to take these writers seriously at all, they must not dismiss the reality of these miracles.

But, as it can be seen from an understanding of propositional and non-propositional scriptural revelation, the Bible does not provide a very clear starting point for a study of miracles.

Problems with miracles of Scripture:

where's the empirical evidence?

no depth of understanding

why is it just the Bible that accounts it?

gospel writers all very different to one another

Reasons we must consider accounts of miracles more seriously:

different gospels are like different people witnessing the same event, but from different viewpoints (e.g. one person observes the train coming from the right, but the other person on the opposite side of the platform sees it coming from the left, and both of them are correct)

number of people they affected are too large to ignore (in some cases, 5000+)

conversion experiences, such as Nicky Cruz - such a radical change - it must be a miracle

miracles have a big impact on people, especially non-believers (e.g. Roman soldiers changing after Jesus' resurrection)

General criteria of miracles:

unexplained by science

unexpected

defies laws of nature

appearance of God, gives positive impact on people's lives, most miracles affect numerous people

people experience miracles when in need of one - terminally ill or lacking faith

positive/answer to prayer

A religious definition would include:

divinely caused

gives hope

particular purpose

religious significance

more specific than a wonderful event or escape

must be apparent violations of laws of nature

A concise definition of miracles:

unexpected and unexplainable event

has religious experience

violation of the laws of nature

How do different philosophers define miracles?

David Hume

"A miracle may be accurately defined as a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by interposition of some invisible agent."

Miracles do not comply with the the laws of science and nature. This makes sense because if God is an omnipotent being, he must be able to break the laws of nature if he so chooses, and miracles cannot happen otherwise.

Thomas Aquinas

"That which has a divine cause, not that whose cause a human person fails to understand."

"Those things done by a divine power apart from the order usually followed by things."

A miracle must be divinely caused, it cannot be a natural event like no one being killed in a car accident, for example. Aquinas says that this cannot be a miracle as it is possible there is an explanation that we just don't understand, or it could be a coincidence. However, it is very difficult to tell whether something is divinely caused or not, rendering Aquinas' definition pretty useless.

R.F. Holland

"A remarkable and beneficial coincidence that is interpreted in a religious fashion."

Holland gives the example of a child playing on a railroad track, where a train is coming around the bend. Neither the child or the train driver has seen the other. The child's mother is watching from up the hill, when suddenly, the train slows, and stops, a few feet from the child. She might claim this event to be a miracle. It is possible that the driver has fainted and the automatic cut-off has stopped the train before the child was hurt.

Holland's definition is known as the contingency definition of miracles. Miracles are simply coincidences that we say are caused by God - our interpretation is what makes it a miracle. However, we may never know what is divinely caused and what is simply coincidence. Also, miracles that defy the laws of nature, such as the weeping statue of Civitavecchia seem to challenge Holland's definition, as they go against the laws of nature, and cannot naturally happen as a coincidence.

Paul Tillich

A miracle is sign event: it is something of religious experience that points to and informs us about the nature of God. The impression it makes on the person is huge. It might lead them to change the direction of their life. Miracles are astonishing but "without contradicting the rational structure of reality."

Miracles merely point us towards God and remind us of his nature, and are not a violation of the laws of nature, as Hume claimed. However, is it possible that our interpretation of miracles is correct? People may interpret the same event as a coincidence or divinely caused, and only one possibility can be right.

An attempt to rank miracles:

Firstly, the miracles "in which something is done by God that nature can never do" are the most credible examples. An example from the Bible includes God making a shadow move backwards in Isaiah 38.

God does something that nature can

do, but not in that sequence and connection. e.g) People being able to see after

being blind – in the natural order people can see first and then become blind

"Something done by God, which is

usually done by the operation of nature, but is done without the working of

natural principles, as when one is cured by divine power of a fever, in itself

naturally curable."

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Natural miracles

Jesus is recorded walking on water towards His disciples in Matthew 14:22-33.

Could this have been a hallucination? The Bible says this happened about 3am, so perhaps this was a tired mind playing tricks on the disciples and the truth was then embellished.

Also, the Red Sea has a high sodium content, which would mean that people are more likely to float on the surface.

https://youtu.be/e6VnZZOFkRU (Einbetten)

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Healing Miracles

Miracles at Lourdes

Bernadette Soubirous, a 14 year old girl from Lourdes was the first to see the apparition of 'Our Lady of Lourdes,' in 1858.

She was told by the 'lady' to drink the water near the Grotto of Massbielle, which was at first rather muddy, but then increasingly clean.

This water has been given to medical patients of all kinds, after which numerous miracles cures were reported.

The first person with a 'certified miracle' was a woman whose right hand had been deformed as a consequence of an accident.

The most recent miracle at Lourdes happened in 2005. Catholic officials said that Anna Santaniello of Italy was taken to bathe in the spring on a stretcher and came back on her own two feet, cured of severe heart disease and ailments that had left her unable to walk or speak properly.

Read more

The Catholic Church are strict about what they will accept as a miracle.

Toward that end, a Vatican-appointed Miracle Commission sifts through hundreds or even thousands of miraculous claims. Typically, the commissions are composed of theologians and scientific experts.Nearly all, or "99.9 percent of these are medical miracles," says Michael O'Neill, who runs the website MiracleHunter.com. "They need to be spontaneous, instantaneous and complete healing. Doctors have to say, 'We don't have any natural explanation of what happened,'" O'Neill said.

A woman whose breast cancer was cured wouldn't qualify, for instance, if she was given a 10 percent chance of survival — she would need to be told there was no chance of survival before any divine intervention, said the Rev. Stephan Bevans, a theology professor at the Catholic Theological Union.

In 2010, former Pope Benedict XVI confirmed that John Paul II had posthumously healed a French nun suffering from Parkinson's disease. The church recently confirmed a second miracle, when a Costa Rican woman's brain injury spontaneously healed after praying to John Paul II.

Miracles can be confirmed only if the healed person prayed solely to one person, such as John Paul II, during their ordeal. That way, there can be no mix-up when determining which person in heaven interceded on their behalf, O'Neill said.

Source

However, the Catholic Church emphasises the importance of believing in Biblical miracles, and claiming it is optional to believe other miracles to be genuine, such as the healing at Lourdes. However, surely this is ludicrous, as modern day miracles should be more convincing for arguing God's existence, as they can be investigated and examined by leading experts, rather than the alleged claim of healing and resurrection scrawled on a piece of paper from two thousand years ago.

Source

https://youtu.be/VTy0Fuuw0g0 (Einbetten)

Healing Crosses of Light

Crosses of light appear on glasses with a pyramid structure when a source of light is place behind them.

What is miraculous about certain crosses of light is that some kind of energy field or magnetism around them has reportedly caused healings or even visions or voices offering support.

Reports of this came from both believers and sceptics.

The first recorded cross of light was in El Monte, California, in 1988. Police had to barricade the street as thousands gathered to witness the miracle.

Numerous reports of crosses of light have come from different countries since then.

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Exorcisms

For an event to be classified as an exorcism, It has to be proved that no mental illness or drugs caused strange behaviour for an event to be classified as an exorcism.

In 1968, 17 year old Anneliese Michel began to experience strange symptoms such as convulsions and hearing voices that told her she was damned.

Anneliese did a number of strange things, including licking her own urine from the floor and eating spiders, flies and coal. She even crawled underneath the table and barked like a dog for two days.

After her parents abandoned the idea that their daughter was suffering with epilepsy, they began to seek help from the Catholic church. Over a period of 10 months, 67 exorcisms were carried out on Anneliese, none of which were successful.

Anneliese died in 1976, after she refused to eat or drink, as she believed that this would rid herself of Satan's influence.

Read more

https://youtu.be/wmL7Mw9oOKA (Einbetten)

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Life After Death

https://youtu.be/JR1ku3kE2lY (Einbetten)

Raising of Lazurus

Lazurus may have had a clinical death, where the circulation and the heart stop.

This is also known as cardiac arrest, and perhaps it is possible that Lazurus suffered from cardiac arrest, but was somehow revived.

However, Jesus predicted that Lazurus would be alive, as he says to Martha, "Your brother will rise again." This challenges the idea that it was purely a coincidence.

https://youtu.be/HaS-9AP96gE (Einbetten)

All four Gospels record Jesus' resurrection three days after His crucifixion. Historical and Biblical scholars agree that His tomb was in fact found empty three days after His death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBJRvsc0Rik (Einbetten)

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Peter Vardy's Exploration of the Definition of Miracles

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Key words

Covenant - a binding agreement. In theology, it describes the agreements made between God and humans. e.g) Jesus is seen as bringing in a new covenant

Form criticism - theological movements that analyse key Biblical texts to discover the truth of them

Demythologising - removing elements of the Biblical accounts and stripping away insignificant details

Arbitrary - an action based on random choice

Partisan - a strong supporter of a certain party or group, often in times of war

Deism - the belief that God creates the world but is them separate and uninvolved in its continuing affairs