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Miracles and criteria

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References

  1. I define a miracle as an extraordinary and religiously significant physical event which never would have occurred except through the relatively immediate action of a rational agent who, in some way, transcends nature.

  2. Guy Robinson, “Miracles”,Ratio, vol. IX, No. 2, Dec. 1967, pp. 155–166.

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  3. Phrases like ‘moral and religious significance’, tend to be somewhat vague. The point I am trying to make in introducing this criterion is made very well by Ramm: ‘It may be safely asserted that a hypothesis does not receive fair treatment if viewed disconnected from its system, and further, that any hypothesis proposed must make peace with the system that it is associated with—even to revolutionising the system, e.g., Copernicus and Einstein. It is therefore impossible to see miracles in the Christian perspective if viewed only as problems of science and history, i.e., to use only historical and scientific categories for interpretation. It is not asked that miracles be accepted blindly simply because they are associated with the Christian system; nor do we argue in a circle asking one to view miracles from the Christian position to see them as true when the Christian system is the point at issue. No hypothesis in science is confirmed until tentatively accepted as true. The tentative acceptation does not prove the hypothesis but it is absolutely necessary to test the hypothesis.’ (Bernard Ramm,Protestant Christian Evidences, Moody Press, Chicago, 1953, p. 129).

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  4. Norman Geisler,Christian. Apologetics, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976, p. 272.

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  5. cf. Hume’s “Of Miracles” inOn Human Nature and the Understanding. ed. Anthony Flew, New York, Colier, 1962, pp. 115–136. Especially note pp. 120, 121, the paragraph beginning “The plain consequence…”

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  1. University of Ottawa, Canada

    Robert Larmer

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  1. Robert Larmer
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Larmer, R. Miracles and criteria. SOPH 23, 4–10 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02780819

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02780819

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