Miracles

There is as yet... no unanimity among New Testament scholars as to the extent to which, or even whether at all, the category of divine man played a part in the interpretation of Jesus in the early Christian traditions.

... we are to look to God for what which only he can give. If it is available elsewhere, we are not to ask for it even though he can provide it. One thing which only he can give us is genuine goodness or holiness . .. and another is his Kingdom.

Presence as ordinarily understood requires spatio-temporal proximity. If however Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is understood in this way it would take a miracle to secure multiple location and an additional miracle to cover it up so that the presence of Christ where the Eucharist was celebrated made no empirical difference. And, while multiple location is logically possible, such metaphysical miracles—miracles of distinction without difference, which have no empirical import—are problematic. I propose an account of Eucharist according to which Christ (...) is indeed really and objectively present in the religiously required sense, without benefit of metaphysical miracles. According to the proposed account, which draws upon Searle’s discussion of “social ontology” in The Construction of Social Reality and The Making of the Social World, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is an institutional fact. I argue that such an account satisfies the requirements for a real presence doctrine. (shrink)

This article aims at contributing to the study of miracles on multiple levels. First, it provides an update on current scholarship in contemporary Muslim interpretations of miracles by summarizing and comparing some positions that, despite their originality and/or potential influence on the wider Muslim readership, are not normally taken into account in a number of recent reconstructions of the concept within Islam. Second, it proposes some complementary philosophical interpretations of those positions, interpretations that involve identifying similarities and commonalities among the (...) positions, despite deep differences and explicit mutual oppositions. As well, this article argues that these interpretations have far-reaching consequences for the philosophical debate on miracles within other traditions and cultures; at stake will be the very meaningfulness of engaging in a univocal, overarching, rationalized interpretation of miracles. (shrink)

This dissertation is an attempt to defend and develop the implications of the view that miracles are events brought about by God which are physically impossible and which possess some religious significance. By "physically impossible" I mean an event contrary to the natural dispositions of things in the world. Such a view constitutes a return to the classical Thomistic conception of miracle. It is motivated by the failure of the standard modern or contemporary view of miracle to stand up to (...) logical, epistemological and theological criticism. ;In the first chapter I attempt to show that a concept of physical impossibility based on either the regularity or the necessitarian view of laws fails. In the second chapter I show that there is coherent conception of physical impossibility in terms of theory of providence which makes God the sole cause of natural events. I reject this concept of miracle since there are good reasons to reject this theory of providence. In the third chapter I set forth a theory of providence which allows genuine causal power to things. On this basis I develop a view of laws of nature and of physical impossibility which meets the difficulties set forth in the first chapter. The fourth chapter is an examination of three attempts to define miracle solely in terms of religious significance, apart from physical impossibility. I argue that these attempts go astray because they do not allow a strong enough sense of God's responsibility for a miracle. Therefore physical impossibility is a necessary condition for the miraculous. However, religious significance is also a necessary condition for an event to be a miracle. Finally, in the fifth chapter, I consider epistemological objections to the definition of miracle I have presented. (shrink)

Que faire des miracles ? Cette question a passablement embarrassé la théologie catholique au cours des dernières décennies. Il est vrai que l’héritage des siècles passés n’était pas simple à recevoir. Longtemps, l’apologétique classique a fait jouer aux miracles un rôle qu’ils ne pouvaient remplir, celui d’argument péremptoire en faveur de la foi.Le présent essai tente de confronter les lacunes de l’apologétique classique aux ressources de la tradition théologique, en fonction de la situation nouvelle créée par les exigences critiques de (...) l’épistémologie moderne ainsi que par les résultats convergents des historiens.What is to be done with miracles? This question has been of considerable embarrassment to Catholic theology over recent decades. It is true that the heritage of past centuries was not easy to handle. For many years, classical apologetics put miracles into a role they could not fill – that of a peremptory argument in favor of faith.This essay attempts to confront the shortcomings of classical apologetics with the resources of theological tradition within the framework of the new situation created by the critical requirements of modern epistemology as well as the results of historical research that converge with them. (shrink)

Following a brief examination of some remarks by Paul Ricoeur on the notion of testimony. I provide the outline or an analysis of revelation based upon certain key concepts of process philosophy. This is followed by a more specific interpretation within the context of Whitehead’s philosophy of process.

There is witness, a unique structure, an exception to the rule of being, irreducible to representation, only of the Infinite (OB 146). It is with this excessive phrase that Levinas collects his thoughts on testimony. How are we to understand this excess? If the phrase is excessive, it is not an exaggerated phrase — not a phrase which, by its very exaggeration, would hold that testimony achieves its supreme signification in religious experience. It is not a question here of giving (...) value to the primacy of religious experience over all other experience, but rather a question of showing that religion, understood as the relation to the holy, to what is absolutely separate, is not of the nature of experience — that is, not of the nature of comprehension and thematization, if experience means thematization. The religious manifests no primacy here, but rather an irreducible singularity, an exception. If there is a restriction, it is not to the benefit of an experience, but rather to that which escapes experience, to the benefit of what alone gives rise to no experience. The Infinite is not the witnessed par excellence, the supreme witnessed (the supreme witness falling to the supreme existent), but that to which we can only bear witness and which alone gives rise to a testimony: “testimony does not thematize that of which it is the witness, and as such it can be a witnessing only of the Infinite” (GDT 196–97). That one can bear witness only to the Infinite means that one can bear witness only to that which absolutely escapes experience, which consequently means that “testimony . . . does not presuppose an experience”(GDT 197). (shrink)