Wiles and His Responses

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Maurice Wiles

Unlike Hume, Wiles didn't reject the notion of miracles for scientific reasons.

"Certainly the notion of miracle cannot simply be ruled out on scientific grounds as logically impossible, since the world we know is not a closed, deterministically ordered system."

Wiles' objection to the traditional view of miracles is on moral grounds.

If there is a God who sometimes performs these sudden miraculous interventions in the world, then it must be an arbitrary God.

"A God who has favourites, a God who can be unfair and a God who lacks compassion."

He argues that the primary usage for the idea of divine action should be in relation to the world as a whole rather than to particular occurrences in it.

There is a single act of God - this act encompasses the world as a whole - God never intervenes in the world by individual acts. (Deist view)

We have to interpret the nature of Christ in light of our interpretation of miracles, if the Christian doctrine is to survive.

Any occasion where God intervenes with the natural order to help individuals or groups raises issues about consistency and fairness.

God would have to be arbitrary (based on random choice) and partisan (favouring one particular party or group).

This raises the question of whether a God who performs occasional arbitrary miracles worthy of worship.

Wiles believed it is better theologically to believe in a God that does not do any miracles, than in one that was not morally good.

However, Wiles believed that there was in effect a single miracle of creation and that God’s creation was good – it doesn’t require intervention in the form of other miracles.

"If the direct action of God, independent of secondary causation, is an intelligible concept, then it would appear to have been sparingly and strangely used. Miracles must be by definition, relatively infrequent or else the whole idea of the laws of nature... would be undermined and ordered life as we know it would be an impossibility. Yet even so it would seem strange that no miraculous intervention prevented Auschwitz or Hiroshima, while the purposes apparently forwarded by some of the miracles acclaimed in the traditional Christian faith seem trivial by comparison."

- Wiles, God's Action in the World

According to Wiles, there are two conclusions which can be made from our experience of miracle in the world:

God performs random, arbitrary miracles and is therefore not worthy of worship.

God does not intervene at all.

"To suppose that God acts in the world by direct intervention just occasionally would be to raise all the problem which perplex the believer as he reflects on the problem of evil, about why God does not intervene more often. It would also prevent him from appealing to the God-given structures of creation, and their necessary role in setting creatures at a distance from their creator and providing a stable environment for their lives, as an explanation for the physical ills which can afflict God's creatures."

- Hebblethwaite, Evil, Suffering and Religion

Wiles' restriction on God also applies to his action in Christ - it would be wrong to say that miracles cannot happen and then allow the incarnation and resurrection.

"The isolation of the incarnation and resurrection as prime and crucial instances of direct divine action, while it may seem a concession to modernity, effectively falsifies the role they formally played. Once peaks in a landscape full of hills, all seen as such instances, they now stand out like naked pillars of rock on a plain."

- Leslie Houlden

Wiles maintains that there must be a way to explain the doctrine of the incarnation and resurrection which does not involve a breach of nature:

Incarnation is not an act of God

It is 'the perfection of human response to God'

The full humanity of Jesus is central

Jesus freely and fully responded totally to God's grace and in doing so, incarnated God in the world

Status of Jesus changes; no longer God; fully human who responds perfectly to God

Wiles' views allow people to believe in God yet still uphold the laws of science.

They also allow believers to reinterpret the idea of prayer. Prayer is not about presenting a wish list to God but about allowing an individual to connect to God’s will.

Challenges to Wiles

Wiles might not like the concept of a God who performs occasional miracles, but nevertheless, the Bible is quite clear that that IS how God operates.

Wiles is wrong to judge God’s actions by human moral standards. If God wants to cure a blind man but not save the people of Hiroshima, because it is God’s choice it will be the right thing to do – even if we cannot understand it.

Wiles misses the point of miracles – they are not meant to be simply helping people in need, but have the purpose of revealing something of God. Therefore, a comparatively small miracle might be more significant because of what it shows about God. Furthermore, it could be argued that helping people is the secondary function of miracles, as they are primarily designed to show us about God's nature.

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Philosophical Problems with Miracles

1) If God causes miracles, this means that he chooses to help some people over others, meaning that he is not omnibenevolent, or omnipotent.

e.g) God appears to heal some people and not others, if he multiply food to feed 5000 people he could end world hunger

Possible response:

If we reference the Irenaean theodicy, it follows that suffering in the world is key to our spiritual growth. Removing all opportunities for growth in our world wouldn't be in our best interests, so God cannot end the suffering of all, and be omnibenevolent.

2) Some miracles seem to trivialise the work and nature of God.

e.g) The miracle of the sun at Fatima, and the crying statue of Civitavecchia seem quite pointless

Possible response:

Miracles that are a response to the prayers of his people just reveals God's compassion for his children. Additionally, the above examples simply demonstrate God's power, as he is able to do things no other person can do. It acts as an encouragement to have faith in him, because there's nothing he cannot do.

3) If God is transcendent (existing outside of time and space), how does he act within our spatiotemporal (within time and space) world? Surely he can have no impact on a world if he exists in such a distinct manner?

e.g) God specifically chose to feed 5000 people, and he chooses to heal specific people

Possible response:

As an omnipotent God, he cannot be limited by his transcendent qualities. Hence, he must be able to choose to intervene in our spatiotemporal world. Like a watchmaker cannot exist as part of his creation, God can intervene in the world, just as a watchmaker can change how the watch operates.

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Rudolph Bultmann

Bultmann stated that the Bible must be 'demythologised' - not stripped of its meaning, but reinterpreted in order to reveal the meanings that are relevant for Christians today. This includes all miraculous events. The word 'kerygma' means proclamation. The essential proclamation of the gospel is what Christian theology attempts to understand and communicate. However this presents essentially the problem of mythology. We cannot write or think except through the thought forms of our time and culture. In this sense, the writers of the New Testament inevitably wrote mythology and it is these mythological ways of thinking that obscure our understanding of the kerygma.

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John Hick

There is a big difference between restricted action and impotence.

God could act in a very obvious way, inspiring awe, wonder and terror - but this would affect human freedom to choose God.

This would break the epistemic distance between humanity and God, and belief in God would no longer hold value. A key aspect of having genuine faith is borne out the God-given gift of free will

God, as an omnibenevolent being, wants us to be able to have genuine choice to believe.

Vardy in the The Puzzle of Evil, takes on Hick's ideas and develops them:

"If faith is to be preserved, if love is to be possible, if the ambiguity of God's actions is to be maintained then they must be hidden and less obvious. It follows therefore that any action by God cannot be readily identified. If people pray for peace in Northern Ireland and it is simply brought about by the divine fiat then human freedom would be destroyed. If a child has cancer and it is simply cured by a miracle then the ambiguity would be denied."

Hick argues, contrary to Wiles, that God can and does interact with his creation.

This can only be indirectly though, through human agency, inspiring humans and being an influence on ordinary events.

Any intervention with the natural order of events will have huge consequences so God has to restrict his actions to: "Those which would either have minimal effects or those whose effects would not unduly interfere with human freedom." - Peter Vardy

For Hick, Wiles is right to be wary of the problems of miracles, but he is wrong to dismiss any type of divine intervention.

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Keith Ward

God can act, but only does so occasionally - if he did so more, the order of creation would be destroyed.

He can be influenced by prayer to act in certain situations, so the petitionary prayers of believers who make particular requests to God can still be answered.

This is important in order to maintain the personal relationship that God has with his creation.

The purpose of those miracles, however, is not to cure suffering, but to build faith in him.

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John Polkinghorne

"A minimalist response is to decline to speak on particular divine actions and to confine theological talk to the single great act of holding the universe in being. Not only is such timeless deism inadequate to correspond to the religious experiences of prayer and an intuition of providence but it is also interesting that it has not commended itself to those scientists-theologians who have written on these matters."

- Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science

Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne is a physicist and theologian and spent many years working as a professional scientist before becoming an Anglican priest.

He argues that the Bible clearly demonstrated that God does act in the world. Miracles are a founding part of Christianity and the possibility of God's intervention is paramount if faith is to be maintained.

He points to the fact that many scientists are also Christians and they do not reject the possibility of God working in the world.

"In unprecedented circumstances, it is entirely conceivable that God will act in totally novel and unexpected ways."

For many religious believers, including Polkinghorne, miracles are important as they are examples of God's providence.

This is a word in theology used to refer to God's goodness and continuing activity in the world for the benefit of creation.

General Providence

This is the goodness of creation e.g) absolute perfectness of our earth, right distance from the sun, protective atmosphere, breathable air

This is important because it shows God's ability to provide for our needs, as well as to bring us pleasure (world is beautiful for our benefit).

This is problematic because there are things wrong with the world, such as natural disasters and diseases.

Special Providence

This is where God acts in the world on particular occasions e.g) feeding of the 5000, healings at Lourdes

This is important because it reveals God's compassion for us as individuals, and shows he is aware of and wants to end our suffering.

This is problematic because God doesn't end all of our suffering, and miracles can sometime violate what seem to be the laws of nature.

Defends the possibility of miracles particularly the resurrection of Jesus.

All that science can tell us is that a given event is against normal expectations not that it cannot happen at all.