Miracle
:
For other uses, see Miracle (disambiguation).
According to many religions, a miracle, derived from the old Latin word miraculum
meaning 'something wonderful', is a striking interposition of divine intervention by God in the universe by which the ordinary course and operation of Nature is overruled, suspended, or modified. People in different faiths have substantially different definitions of the word miracle
. Even within a specific religion there is often more than one usage of the term.
Sometimes the term miracle
may refer to the action of a supernatural being that is not a god. Thus, the term divine intervention'' refers specifically to the direct involvement of a deity.
Different religious traditions and doctrines are divided on their views of miracles. Some religions view miracles as the provenence of their deity or deities only, while others report ongoing miraculous occurrences. Some faiths subscribe to the belief that miracles happened in the past, but do not currently occur. There is also division within sects, and between the religious leadership and the followers of many religions.
Christian views of miracles
The description of most miracles in the
Hebrew Bible (
Old Testament) and in the Christian
New Testament are generally the same as the modern-day definition of the word: God intervenes in the laws of nature.
A literal reading of the Biblical accounts shows that there are a number of ways this can occur: God may suspend or speed up the laws of nature to produce a
supernatural occurrence; God can create matter out of nothing; God can breathe life into inanimate matter. The Bible does not explain details of how these miracles happen.
Today many
Orthodox Jews, some Christians, and most
Muslims adhere to this view of miracles. This view is generally rejected by non-Orthodox Jews, liberal Christians and
Unitarian Universalists.
Some events commonly understood to be miraculous may not be instances of the impossible. For instance, consider the parting of the
Red Sea. This incident occurred when
Moses and
Israelites fled from
bondage in
Egypt, to begin their exodus to the promised land. The book of
Exodus never says that the Red Sea split in an immediate fashion, and the "waters [as] a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left" could be figurative. The text might rather be interpreted to say that God caused a strong
wind to slowly drive the shallow waters to land overnight. In this scheme there is no claim that God pushed apart the sea as it is shown in many films; rather, the miracle would be that Israel crossed this precise place, at exactly the right time, when Moses lifted his
staff, and that the pursuing Egyptian
army then drowned when the wind stopped and the piled waters rushed back in.
Early Christian writers of the first few centuries appear to take the biblical stories of miracles at face value. In addition, they report additional miracles that happened in later centuries. The purposes of miracles vary, but recurring themes are miracles done for the benefit of a person, such as physical
healing, or
raising from the dead; miracles done to prevent or discourage some
evil from happening, such as
Herod Agrippa being consumed with
worms upon inviting people to
worship him, or various
martyrs being found unusually difficult to kill, such as not being touched by flames (
Shadrach,
Meshach and
Abednego; or
Polycarp of
Smyrna); and oftentimes to increase the
faith of those who witnessed or later heard of the miracles, whether the faith of current believers or unbelievers moved to convert to Christianity after witnessing a miracle.
Miracles are central to most of Christian
theology; they are the pillar upon which the reasonableness or truth of the religion is set to stand. Although most Catholic and certain Protestant theologians believe that the existence and certain limited properties of God can be proven philosophically and/or scientifically, these theologians explain that other elements of their beliefs have come from statements made by God either directly or through a person who proved that the statement was coming from God by performing a bona-fide miracle. (This assumes God wouldn't lie, something which is believed true by a philosophical argument.) This is seen by many theologians as the primary reason for Jesus to perform miracles, to prove that he was God so that humans would follow him. The miracles of Jesus were performed in front of many people, not in private. He did them wherever he went, at all times. They were done for all types of people, not just Jews. The miracles benefited the people Jesus was with, not Jesus himself other than serving as proof as to who he was.
C.S. Lewis,
Norman Geisler,
William Lane Craig, and Christians who engage in
Christian apologetics have argued that miracles are reasonable and plausible. [
1] [
2] [
3][
4][
5].
There have been a large number of Catholic Christians, philosophers, and clergy who have discussed a wide variety of ideas concerning the nature of miracles. These ideas vary from strict literal acceptance of the Biblical text, to neo-Aristotelian rationalist interpretations of miracles. In some Catholic views, a miracle is an unnatural occurrence that is brought about by divine intervention. Saints like St.
Francis of Assisi and St. Anthony have been credited with hundreds of miracles during their lifetime and thousands after their death. Many Catholics believe that dead saints are still performing miracles, by interceding on behalf of the sinner before God.
Islamic view of miracles
Miracles are found to be common in
Islamic beliefs and traditions. It is believed that all miracles are done by the will of
Allah (God). The
Muslim holy book, the
Qur'an, talks about miracles that happened to people, tribes and prophets. Miracles are not described as "miracles" in the modern definition, but large uncommon events all performed by God's will. Some examples of miracles include events that happened in the life of the
prophets of Islam such as
Abraham when he was about to sacrifice his son
Ishmael, the sudden appearance of the
Zam Zam well to
Hagar (the wife of Abraham) when she was desperately looking for water for her baby,
Jesus who was able to speak as a child and cure
lepers, the parting of the
Red Sea as
Moses and the Israelites fled from slavery in
Egypt, and many more miracles are discussed. Also things that humans can not accomplish, but were done by God are also considered miracles, such as the
Qur'an itself including many scientific, mathematical and other discoveries inside it. See [
6] for more information.
Hindu views of miracles
Hindus believe in divine intervention of God and that all of their deities and many of their
saints and
yogis have performed miracles.
There are countless examples of miracles in
Hinduism from ancient times upto the present day.
The ocean allowing a floating bridge to be built on itself to let the armies of Lord
Rama cross, child
Prahlada, an ardent devotee of the Lord, not being able to be killed by many means (fire, trampling by elephants etc), physical healing by saints,
fire walking, and disappearance of the physical body on entering the sanctum of a temple (Saint
Mirabai,
Andal) are just a few examples. The lives of saints, the epics
Ramayana and
Mahabharata, as well as numerous other Hindu narratives showcase miracles. For example, Lord
Krishna, raised from the dead, Parikshit, grandson of
Arjuna, who was born stillborn.
Recent famous saints, such as
Raghavendra Swami and
Sai Baba of Shirdi, are said to have performed many miracles during their lifetime and are believed to continue to bless their devotees to this day.
Jewish views of miracles
Summarised by
Maimonides:
"...Our Sages... said.. as regards miracles:... that the miracles are to some extent also natural: for they say, when God created the Universe with its present physical properties, He made it part of these properties, that they should produce certain miracles at certain times, and the sign of a
prophet consisted in the fact that God told him to declare when a certain thing will take place, but the thing itself was effected according to the fixed
laws of Nature." (
Guide for the Perplexed 2:29; but see below.)
In this view, when the walls of
Jericho fell, it was not because God directly brought them down. Rather, God planned that there would be an
earthquake at that place and time, so that the city would fall to the Israelites. Instances where rabbinic writings say that God made miracles a part of
creation include
Midrash Genesis Rabbah 5:45; Midrash
Exodus Rabbah 21:6;
Midrash Koheleth; and
Pirkei Avot 5:6.In this view, a miracle can be defined as a violation of
laws of nature by
God or some other
supernatural being. To wit:
# There are events that seem to be miracles.# The best explanation for these events is that they were performed by a supernatural being.# Therefore, there is probably a supernatural being (i.e., God) that performs what appear to be miracles.
Many adherents of
monotheistic religions assert that miracles, if established, are
logical proof of the existence of an
omnipotent,
omniscient, and all-benevolent God. A number of criticisms of this point of view exist:
# While the existence of miracles may imply the existence of a supernatural miracle worker, that supernatural miracle worker need not be an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent God; it could be any supernatural being. That is, it only proves that gods might exist, not that there is a monotheistic
God.# Some argue that miracles, if established, are evidence that a perfect God does not exist, as such a being would not want to, or need to, violate his own laws of nature.
Catholic theologians do not accept this reasoning; they conclude that the miracles are from an omnipotent God, because they accept as already logically proven (through concepts like the
prime mover) that there must be a single omnipotent, omniscient, God, when speaking philosophically. (However, Catholic theology does not depend on philosophical arguments for God, but rather Revelation.)# Laws of nature are inferred from empirical evidence. Thus if an accepted law of nature ever appeared to have been violated, it could simply be that the accepted law was an erroneous inference from an insufficient set of empirical observations, rather than a supernatural disruption of the true course of nature.# All claims of miracles are premature until such time as complete knowledge of all natural laws is held by all making and examining the claim and the miracle is demonstrated to be not natural. As all claims of natural laws are falsifiable and therefore complete knowledge is impossible, it is not now nor has it been nor ever will it be time to claim that an event has broken a natural law.
Aristotelian and Neo-Aristotelian views
Aristotle rejected the idea that God could or would intervene in the order of the natural world.
Jewish neo-
Aristotelian philosophers, who are still influential today, include
Maimonides,
Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon, and
Gersonides. Directly or indirectly, their views are still prevalent in much of the religious Jewish community.
Hume's views
According to the philosopher
David Hume, A miracle is "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent."
[Miracles on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]These are held by both classical and modern thinkers.
In
Numbers 22 is the story of
Balaam and the talking
donkey. Many hold that for miracles such as this, one must either assert the literal truth of this
story, or one must then reject the story as false. However, some Jewish commentators (e.g.
Saadiah Gaon and
Maimonides) hold that stories such as these were never meant to be taken literally in the first place. Rather, these stories should be understood as accounts of a
prophetic experience, which are
dreams or
visions.
Joseph H. Hertz, a 20th century
Jewish biblical commentator, writes that these verses "depict the continuance on the subconscious plane of the mental and moral conflict in Balaam's soul; and the dream apparition and the speaking donkey is but a further warning to Balaam against being misled through avarice to violate God command."
As products of creative art and social acceptance
In this view, miracles do not really occur. Rather, they are the product of creative story tellers. They use them to embellish a hero or incident with a theological flavor. Using miracles in a story allow characters and situations to become bigger than life, and to stir the emotions of the listener more than the mundane and ordinary.
As commonplace events
Littlewood's law states that individuals can expect miracles to happen to them, at the rate of about one per month. By its definition, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.
Followers of the Indian
gurus
Sathya Sai Baba and
Swami Premananda claim that they routinely perform miracles. The dominant view among sceptics is that these are predominantly
sleight of hand or elaborate
magic tricks.
Some modern religious groups claim ongoing occurrence of miraculous events. While some miracles have been proven to be fraudulent (see
Peter Popoff for an example) others (as the
Paschal Fire in Jerusalem) have not proven susceptible to analysis. Some groups are far more cautious about proclaiming apparent miracles genuine than others, although official sanction, or the lack thereof, rarely has much effect on popular belief.
*
Miracles of Jesus*
Miracles at Lourdes*
Divine Providence In Jewish thought* Colin Brown. Miracles and the Critical Mind. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984. (Good survey).
* Colin J. Humphreys,
Miracles of Exodus. HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.
* Krista Bontrager,
It's a Miracle! Or, is it?* Eisen, Robert (1995).
Gersonides on Providence, Covenant, and the Chosen People. State University of New York Press.
* Goodman, Lenn E. (1985).
Rambam: Readings in the Philosophy of Moses Maimonides. Gee Bee Tee.
* Kellner, Menachem (1986).
Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought. Oxford University Press.
* C.S. Lewis. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. New York, Macmillan Co., 1947.
* C.F.D. Moule (ed.). Miracles:Cambridge Studies in their Philosophy and History. London, A.R. Mowbray 1966, ©1965 (Good survey of Biblical miracles as well).
* Graham Twelftree. Jesus the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological Study. IVP, 1999. (Best in its field).
* Woodward, Kenneth L. (2000).
The Book of Miracles. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-82393-4.
*
Andrew Dickson White (1896 first edition. A classic work constantly reprinted)
A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, See chapter 13, part 2,
Growth of Legends of Healing: the life of Saint Francis Xavier as a typical example.
*
Castles in the Air*
God's Miracles, Islamic perspective*
An Indian Skeptic's explanation of miracles: By Yuktibaadi compiled by
Basava Premanand*
Religious miracles*
Skeptics Dictionary on miracles*
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry*
Why Don't Miracles Happen Today? - A Jewish view on miracles nowdays chabad.org
* [
7] On the Cessation of the Charismata â€" the problem of miracles today.
*
The Continuation of Miracles by
Jimmy Akin
