Chapter 10.12

Miracles & Anti-supernaturalism

An Attack on God’s Glory

A) Types of Anti-supernaturalism

Table of Topics

A) Types of Anti-supernaturalism

A.1) Atheistic Anti-supernaturalism

A.2) Deistic/Liberal Anti-supernaturalism

A.3) Evangelical Anti-supernaturalism

A.4) Arminian Anti-supernaturalism

A.5) Anti-Charismatic Anti-supernaturalism

B) Problems with Anti-supernaturalism

B.1) There is a God!

B.2) Biblical faith in the supernatural is based on miraculous evidence

B.3) God judges people based on their response to miracles

B.4) God’s miracles intervene in God’s natural laws

B.5) Scientific advances have not and will not explain away biblical miracles

Extras & Endnotes

Primary Points

• Anti-supernaturalism is a bias against, or the outright denial of the possibility or existence of miracles.
• Anti-supernaturalism manifests itself in various forms and degrees from the atheistic kind, to the Evangelical type.
• Deistic anti-supernaturalism is a foundation of the criticism of the Bible.
• Many professing, Evangelical Christian Bible scholars go to great lengths to give natural explanations for the miracles in the Bible.
• Anti-supernaturalists are guilty of slander against God because they put His miracles in a less God-glorifying light than they were intended to have.
• A dilution of the miracles in Scripture is a direct attack on their divine source and subsequently on the divine authority of Scripture.
• the abuses, deceptions, and doctrinal errors in super-supernaturalism have tempted many Christians to be overly wary of any claim to the supernatural.
• If an all-powerful God exists, then miracles are very possible, and because He loves His Creation His supernatural interventions are even probable.
• Anti-supernaturalism seems to ignore the fact that God has and will judge people for not properly recognizing miracles.
• While some divine miracles merely use the laws of Nature, many of those recorded in the Bible clearly violated and broke natural laws.
• God is sovereign enough to ensure that no scientific understandings will undermine the purpose He has for the miracles recorded in Scripture.

In the next chapter, and throughout Knowing Our God, we exhibit a great deal of skepticism toward the plethora of modern claims to miracle workers because we believe such super-supernaturalism is unbiblical and harmful to the Church. However, we are quick to defend the supernatural nature of the miracles and miracle working recorded in Scripture. Those with a bias against, or outright denial of the true nature of these miraculous events in Scripture can be referred to as anti-supernaturalists. God’s miraculous deeds are a great glory to Him, and any attack on the divine nature of His miracles is an offense to His glory. Such is the case with unbiblical anti-supernaturalism in any form.

A.1) Atheistic Anti-supernaturalism

While the term anti-supernaturalism generally refers to those who are unnecessarily opposed to, or skeptical of miracles, it is helpful to distinguish different categories of it. Atheistic anti-supernaturalism is simply and commonly referred to as Naturalism. Norm Geisler defines this when he writes:

Philosophical or metaphysical naturalism refers to the view that nature is the “whole show.” There is no supernatural realm and/or intervention in the world. In the strict sense, all forms of nontheisms are naturalistic, including atheism, pantheism, deism, and agnosticism. ^[1]

While many atheistic anti-supernaturalists may not be strictly atheists, they approach the world from a perspective that denies the existence of God, and therefore makes the miraculous either impossible or highly improbable.

The most notorious anti-supernaturalist was, of course, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776). Tucked away in the tenth chapter of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), was a twenty page chapter simply entitled, “Of Miracles.” The influence of this small treatise is described when one Christian scholar writes, “No work on miracles penned in the seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth centuries receives greater attention today than Hume’s slim essay.” ^[2] A modern day supporter of Hume’s views, philosopher Anthony Flew, writes concerning “Of Miracles,” “These pages . . . provoked in Hume’s own lifetime more protest and controversy than all the rest of [Hume’s] writings put together.” ^[3]

It would seem Hume anticipated the endurance of his thoughts when he wrote:

I flatter myself that I have discovered an argument . . . which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently will be useful as long as the world endures. ^[4]

Hume, along with other atheistic anti-supernaturalists, simply deny that miracles are believable. We have already addressed Hume’s specific arguments elsewhere concerning historical skepticism. ^[5]

A.2) Deistic/Liberal Anti-supernaturalism

Deism was a popular philosophical trend in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, and was held by such early Americans as Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). ^[6] While they believed in a divine Creator, they denied that He was active in His creation. Douglas Geivett and Gary Habermas write:

Classical deists generally opposed belief in divine intervention in history, whether in the form of prophecy or miracles, for such belief seemed to them to violate the canons of reason. Divine intervention was often regarded as superfluous or gratuitous in that it implied that God’s original creation was somehow defective. Sometimes alternative schemes [explanations] were advanced in order to explain the supernatural components of traditional beliefs [and miracles in Scripture]. ^[7]

Similarly, Norm Geisler writes:

[S]ome theists, especially scientists, hold a form of methodological naturalism. That is, while acknowledging the existence of God and the possibility of miracles, they employ a method of approaching the natural world that does not admit of miracles. This is true of many theistic evolutionists. ^[8]

While deistic anti-supernaturalists are more favorable toward the existence of God than atheistic ones, they are extremely skeptical of any miracles. Accordingly, Dr. Geisler writes of Jefferson:

Thomas Jefferson literally cut the miracles from the four Gospels and pasted the desupernaturalized remains in a scrap book. It was later published as The Jefferson Bible. It ends thus: “There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.” The rest of the story–the resurrection of Christ–is a miracle that cannot, thought Jefferson, be accepted by good reason. ^[9]

Other religious persons we would put in the category of deistic anti-supernaturalists include the philosophers Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

In addition, an anti-supernatural deism is one of the foundations of liberal biblical criticism. Accordingly, the very influential twentieth-century NT scholar Rudolph Bultmann (1884-1976) wrote:

It is impossible to use the electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles. We may think we can manage it in our own lives, but to expect others to do so is to make the Christian faith unintelligible and unacceptable to the modern world. ^[10]

What is surprising is that such people claim to be Christians and have been widely accepted as such. On the contrary, as the renowned theologian J. I. Packer writes:

Belief in the miraculous is integral to Christianity. Theologians who discard all miracles, thus obliging themselves to deny Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection, the two supreme miracles of Scripture, should not claim to be Christians. ^[11]

Which rightly condemns a whole horde of particularly twentieth century German Bible scholars to Hell, and all the liberal anti-supernatural Bible critics who would follow them today. As we have written elsewhere:

The effects of [unregenerated] devil-darkened reason is one reason why those who deny the authenticity of the miracles recorded in Scripture are hardly in a position to convincingly claim they are born again Christians. A denial of the biblical miracles normally exposes an unregenerated mind that, underneath all the religious veneer, is actually “hostile to God” (Rom 8:7) and unwilling to give Him the glory He deserves. ^[12]

Several years ago, James Orr (1844–1913) described this liberal/deistic antisupernaturalism and its absurdity when he wrote:

To those who deny supernatural revelation Jesus is necessarily a problem. What are they to make of Him? The one thing they are sure of is, that the supernatural claims set up for Him cannot be admitted. Whatever their admiration for His Personality and religion, He must be brought and kept within purely human limits. To show how this may be successfully done is the aim of numerous recent efforts at depicting His life and work. There are many schools in the negative camp, but this is the common denominator of them all-the gravitation-level to which they all tend. Jesus must be non-miraculous. . . .

[Such antisupernaturalism] does not explain the Jesus of the Gospels. It does not explain the faith and hope of the early Christian Church, based on the facts which the Gospels record. It does not explain the vast effects which have come from the appearance and work of this Jesus. It does not explain how even such an image of Jesus came to be there-who created it, or could create it, or whence the materials came from which it was composed. It does not explain the edifice of Christian life, work, hope, and aspiration which has been built on Jesus, and, despite of all assaults on it, has endured through the ages. ^[13]

A.3) Evangelical Anti-supernaturalism

A surprising discovery in a contemporary study of miracles is the amount of effort that even more conservative, Evangelical scholars invest in trying to offer natural explanations for the miracles recorded in Scripture. Many of the OT miracles for example have been attacked in this way. Notice the anti-supernatural attitude in the following excerpt from Colin Brown, a respected NT scholar, in the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (NIDNTT):

In the cases of the healing of Naaman (2 Ki. 5) and the restoration to life of children (I Ki. 17:17-24; 2 Ki. 4:18-37) we have [today] instances of paranormal healings beyond normal medical explanation. The long day in Joshua 10 may well be a poetic description of the invigoration of Joshua’s soldiers. Alternatively it has been explained as an abnormal refraction of the rays of the sun and moon and as a supernaturally induced thunderstorm giving the men relief from the burning heat (cf. B. Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture, 1955, 107-10) . . .

John Gray comments, “The factual basis of the ‘miracle’ of the floating axe-head may be that Elisha with a long pole or stick probed about the spot indicated (an important point in the text) until he succeeded either in inserting the stick into the socket, or, having located the hard object on the muddy bottom, moved it until the man was able to discover it” (I & II Kings, 1964, 460). It may be noted that the text itself does not call the event a miracle or even a sign . . .

The view that one takes of Daniel in the fiery furnace and the lions’ den (Dn. 3 and 6) will depend on the view that one takes of the Book of Daniel as a whole. The stories . . . might have a didactic value, but little basis in historical reality. Alternatively, they might be a figurative, stylized way of describing some historical event . . . Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego . . . survived their ordeal possibly protected by their clothing mentioned in the narrative [rather than the angel also mentioned in the narrative!]. ^[14]

Dr. Brown has become considered as something of an expert on biblical miracles and makes the following entry in the influential International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE):

The [Egyptian] plagues have been interpreted [by Brown] as a series of natural disasters, beginning with the washing down of red earth from the Abyssinian and Ethiopian plateau together with reddish microorganisms called flagellates [Nevermind that the Bible says it was blood (Ex. 7:17)!]. Decomposing fish caused the frogs to leave the Nile and spread the diseases described in the second set of plagues. The third set begins with hail and thunderstorms typical of the time of year which produced the earlier sequences. The hail would [naturally?] destroy flax and barley, but would leave wheat and spelt for the locusts. The darkness was an unusually strong Khamsin, or desert sandstorm, of the kind which strikes Egypt from the south in late February or early March . . . The manna described in Ex. 16:14,31 and Nu. 11:7-9 resembles the excretion of two scale-insects which feed on the twigs of the tamarisk tree. ^[15]

A similar concession is made by the Baptist theologian Millard Erickson, another respected conservative scholar, in his Christian Theology, when he writes:

[M]iracles [may be] actually the manifestations of little known or virtually unknown natural laws. If we fully knew and understood nature, we could understand and even predict these events. Whenever the rare circumstances that produce a miracle reappear in that particular combination, the miracle will reoccur. [F]or example, the miraculous catch of fish in Luke 5. According to this view, Christ did not create fish for the occasion, nor did he somehow drive them from their places in the lake to where the net was to be let down. Rather, unusual conditions were present so that the fish had gathered in a place where they would not ordinarily be expected. Anytime those particular circumstances were present, the fish gathered in that spot. Thus, Jesus’ miracle was not so much a matter of omnipotence as of omniscience. The miracle came in his knowing where the fish would be.

Other types of miracles come to mind as well. Some of Jesus’ healings could well have been psychosomatic healings, that is, cases of powerful suggestion removing hysterical symptoms. Since many illnesses involving physical symptoms are functional rather than organic in origin and character, it seems reasonable to assume that Jesus simply utilized his extraordinary knowledge of psychosomatics to accomplish these healings. Much about this view is appealing, particularly since some of the biblical miracles fit this scheme quite well; it may well be that some of them were of this nature. ^[16]

In a similar vein, the respected Baptist NT scholar James Dunn has written:

Just how extraordinary his [Christ’s] healings were by the standards of modern medical knowledge is not clear. No doubt Jesus was responsible for curing mental illness, blindness, lameness and deafness; but these could all be hysterical disorders. Even the healing of leprosy and raising of the dead, which Jesus probably [probably?] claimed (Matt. 11.5) may not take us beyond the range of psychosomatic illnesses. In the one case a nervously conditioned disease which gave the appearance of leprosy and which was described as a form of leprosy, and in the other some form of coma or catalepsy.

What is rather striking is that no instances of healing purely physical injuries or mending broke limbs are attributed to Jesus in the earliest stratum of tradition [a very convenient argument]- that is to say, there is no instance of a healing miracle which falls clearly outside the general category of psycho-somatic illnesses [in the parts of Scripture Dunn wants to accept as authentic] . . .

At the very least we must say, I think, that Jesus was that type of charismatic (what Robert Graves might call the ‘psychic 5 %’), who could draw on sources of energy within himself of which the ordinary man is only rarely aware, or who was so in tune with wider reality that he could act as a sort of receiver and transmitter from a richer source of energy outside himself. . . .

If Jesus’ mighty works of healing can be established as facts on the basis of his own words, the same does not hold for the so-called ‘nature miracles’ – particularly calming the storm, walking on the water, feeding the five thousand (or four thousand) in the desert, and cursing the fig tree. ^[17]

Like Thomas Jefferson noted above, Dr. Dunn would seem to use subjective biblical criticism to cut and paste Scripture to his liking.

We suggest that such denials of the miraculous nature of the events recorded in Scripture have some devastating consequences. Isn’t it slander against our Creator and Savior to put things in a less God-glorifying light than they actually were? Evangelical anti-supernaturalists seem to suggest at times that the extraordinary miracles of the Bible were merely coincidences. For example, Dr. Erickson suggests that a miraculous catch of fish which caused the Apostle Peter to fall on His face in fearful recognition that Christ was the Lord (cf. Luke 5:8), was merely a result of Jesus knowing more about the schooling patterns of fish than the fishermen He was with.

While such scholars are willing to admit divine intervention such that, “the event is a providential ordering of natural causes,” many of their examples seem to deny the need for such intervention. There is a “watering down” of the supernatural nature of the biblical writers. The real question here is did God intend for these events to be interpreted as miracles of the extraordinary, rare, supernatural and awe-inspiring kind, or merely those within the power of humans and Nature? There is no doubt that His intention was the former.

Anti-supernatural Evangelicals will claim that their interpretations maintain that intention, however, when they suggest, for example, that the manna which the Bible says “rained down [as] the grain of heaven” (Ps 78:24) was actually bug dung, as Colin Brown does, they should not be surprised that the rest of us would take offense, and suggest that God might too. The healings in the Bible are not intended to be interpreted as something that occurred from the more natural processes of the human mind or body, like the type of healings that occur today in hospitals, “faith-healing” services, and among New Age positive thinkers. The healings in the Bible accomplished what no process in Nature can.

In addition, there seems to be a hint of rationalism in Evangelical anti-supernaturalism in that there is a presumption that all biblical miracles can and need to be explained, in order to be believed. As we have written elsewhere, this is a foundational tenet of rationalism and does not belong in a biblical world view. ^[18]

Evangelical anti-supernaturalism is not a minor issue. Any kind of dilution of the miracles of Christ or the Prophets and Apostles is a direct attack on their divine authority and subsequently on the divine authority of Scripture. As we have demonstrated elsewhere, God intends to authenticate divine authority with supernatural deeds, ^[19] and if these deeds were merely things that any highly intelligent or charismatic person could do, then the divine authority of Christianity is substantially undermined.

Far too many “Christian” “scholars” today deserve the condemnation of the nineteenth century “Old Princeton” Reformed theologian B. B. Warfield (1851–1921), who wrote regarding the “Christian” anti-supernaturalists in his day:

The supernatural is the very breath of Christianity’s nostrils and an anti-supernaturalistic atmosphere is to it the deadliest miasma [“poisonous air”]. An absolutely antisupernaturalistic Christianity is therefore a contradiction in terms. Nevertheless, immersed in an anti-supernaturalistic world-atmosphere, Christian thinking tends to become as antisupernaturalistic as is possible to it. And it is indisputable that this is the characteristic of the Christian thought of our day.

As Dr. Bascom puts it, the task that has been set themselves by those who would fain be considered the “bolder thinkers of our time” is “to curb the supernatural, to bring it into the full service of reason.” The real question with them seems to be, not what kind and measure of supernaturalism does the Christianity of Christ and His apostles recognize and require; but, how little of the supernatural may be admitted and yet men continue to call themselves Christians. The effort is not to Christianize the world-conception of the age, but specifically to desupernaturalize Christianity so as to bring it into accord with the prevailing world-view. ^[20]

Along these lines, Gordon H. Clark (1902-1985) had written more recently:

Some of the modernistic attempts to explain miracles are no less than the most tawdry of intellectual dishonesty. The piety which defends Scripture by explaining the feeding of the five thousand on the ground that when the boy opened his lunch box the others were inspired by his example to open theirs, and thus a huge picnic resulted, is a piety which deserves contempt, not intellectual refutation.

How people who propose such explanations can pose as religious and moral leaders is beyond honest understanding. Whatever a miracle may be, this type of device does not explain it, because of its absurd distortion of the text. Average morality dictates either an open denial of the alleged event, or a [God-honoring and reasonable] attempt to explain what the narrative actually contains. ^[21]

A.4) Arminian Anti-supernaturalism

Elsewhere we have written:

A great deal of sound doctrine depends on when a miracle is to be expected. . . . [A]nti-supernaturalists are in error because they ignore when God has promised a miracle because it is needed. Here is where Arminian theology reflects an unbiblical anti-supernaturalism. In such a perspective, no supernatural rebirth or action of the Holy Spirit is needed in order for someone to receive the Gospel in a saving way. On the contrary, as we discuss elsewhere, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God [including the Gospel], for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor 2:14). ^[22] Arminian theology ignores the biblical promises and the foundational need for the miracle of regeneration in saving faith, and therefore, can also be categorized as anti-supernaturalists. ^[23]

A.5) Anti-Charismatic Anti-supernaturalism

Unfortunately, the many documented abuses, deceptions, and doctrinal errors in super-supernaturalism ^[24] have tempted many Christians to be overly wary of any claim to the supernatural. We are reminded of something Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) wrote in his own effort to help fellow Christians maintain a balanced perspective on miracles during the debates that surrounded similar phenomena in his own day:

[D]uring the strife, satan leads both parties far out of the right way, driving each to great extremes, one on the right hand, and the other on the left, according as he finds they are most inclined, or most easily moved and swayed, till the right path in the middle is almost wholly neglected. ^[25]

Accordingly, our super-supernaturalist friends may be right at times to reprove the rest of us for not praying for the healing of the sick diligently and expectantly enough, and unnecessarily discounting all reports of the miraculous. While we may be tempted to blame the excesses in super-supernaturalism, we can never blame others for being unbiblical, which is true of any kind of anti-supernaturalism. What we are looking for is a biblical and God-honoring supernaturalism which neither anti or super-supernaturalism has the right to claim.

B) Problems with Anti-supernaturalism

B.1) There is a God!

Obviously, the first three of the above types of anti-supernaturalists have their reasons for denying the miraculous in Scripture. Atheists, of course, wish to avoid one more evidence for the existence of a Creator whom they are accountable to. Deists want to exalt the power and authority of humans like themselves at the expense of God’s rightful position. The denial of God’s presence means no miracles and the denial of miracles means no God, and that is just how they want it to be. A belief in God is prerequisite to a belief in His miracles, as evidenced by studies which show that the frequency of these beliefs are essentially the same. No wonder that a denial of God’s existence or involvement would have the opposite effect. And this perspective obviously skews their perception of the world.

While ones like David Hume claimed that the probability of a miracle is essentially non-existent, we who know the real God also know that, while miracles may be relatively rare, their existence is very probable. Accordingly, we can say with H. D. Lewis, “A world created by God . . . has room for a miracle in it.” ^[26] Likewise, Christian philosopher Ronald Nash writes: “Having the right worldview, that is, viewing the world through the right conceptual lens, is vital to the proper appraisal of miracle claims and their significance for our lives.” ^[27] And because atheistic and deistic anti-supernaturalists leave something as big as God out of their worldview, they are in a very limited position to correctly interpret the world at all. If an all-powerful God exists, then miracles are eminently possible, and because He loves and cares for His Creation His supernatural interventions are even probable.

It is only born again Christians who can rightly recognize the miraculous works of the One only they know. Accordingly, Winfried Corduan writes:

There is no good reason to stipulate that being able to persuade unbelievers or skeptics delineates the single or even the crucial test for the possibility of recognizing a miracle. Many observers may fail to recognize the aurora borealis, the symptoms of diabetes or the invalid character of an AAA-2 categorical syllogism. But that fact does not mean that people trained to recognize such things are not entitled to make the identification. It is quite possible that believers are more expert when it comes to recognizing miracles because their worldview enables them to recognize them more easily and accurately. The fact that someone with a different worldview cannot recognize miracles need not be fatal to the possibility of any such recognition. ^[28]

Likewise, spiritually unregenerated people such as atheists and deists have a God-hating nature which seriously handicaps their reason, resulting in what we have called elsewhere, “the insanity of humanity.” ^[29] However, not only has such regeneration freed up our minds for the truth about God, but through it we have experienced our own real miracle. The reason that many anti-supernaturalists do not believe in miracles is because they have never experienced one. As Bernard Ramm (1916-1992) put it:

The Christian has had a taste of the power indicated by the evidences. The power which raised Christ from the dead is the same power quickening the believer from spiritual death to spiritual life (Eph. 2: 1 ff.). The power that dispelled the gloom of cosmic darkness dispels the sinful darkness of the human heart (II Cor. 4: 1 ff.). The power which took away the blindness of a Bartimaeus takes away the blindness of human sin in the believer’s mind. The omniscience of God in prophecy is tasted by the Christian when he must confess that he did not know God, but God knew him. The Christian is partaker of the powers that have been-in the mighty acts of God in the past-and of the age that shall be. ^[30]

It is interesting to note that any atheist living in the time of the antichrist will believe that he is God, and will likewise believe he can do miracles. There will be no skeptics in that day because “God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie” (1 Thess 2:11) when the antichrist is “proclaiming himself to be God” (1 Thess 2:4) and performing “all kinds of . . . miracles, signs and wonders” (v. 9). ^[31]

The foundational philosophical premise of most anti-supernaturalism (i.e. there is no God) is unreasonable, and impossible for the Christian. Equally unreasonable is the idea that there are no miracles. The Christian knows better. Perhaps the greatest problem with a disbelief in miracles is the fact that they are really happening today. Again, the greatest, most amazing, and abundant modern miracle is the spiritual one of regeneration, examples of which we have documented elsewhere. ^[32] However, there are parts of the world in which God is allowing some amazing physical miracles as well, some of which we have noted elsewhere. ^[33]

B.2) Biblical faith in the supernatural is based on miraculous evidence

Some see no need for miracles to substantiate the claims of Christianity. Accordingly, Reformed theologian R. C. Sproul writes:

Since the [Immanuel] Kantian watershed consigned miracle to the realm of the unknowable or incredible, many Christians have abandoned the debate, unnecessarily surrendering the weapons of reason and empirical investigation to the arsenals of the skeptic. Hiding behind a mystical type of evidenceless “faith,” these Christians have believed that rational inquiry into miracles would be futile at best and impious at worst. They have substituted credulity for credibility, giving some justification for the skeptics’ contempt for their faith. ^[34]

Likewise, Christian philosopher William Abraham remarks:

It has been objected that the very thought of asking for a [supernatural] justification of a claim to possess a [divinely authoritative] revelation is a betrayal of faith. Thus [the neoorthodox theologian] Reinhold Niebuhr writes: ‘Christ cannot be known as the revelation of God except by faith and repentance; but a faith not quite sure of itself always hopes to express its scepticism by establishing the revelatory depth of a fact through its marvellous character. This type of miracle is in opposition to true faith. ^[35]

We have demonstrated elsewhere in a discussion regarding the popularity of fideism, ^[36] that a biblical conception of faith is based on evidence, not the lack of it. This is precisely how God made us, and why He has always provided supernatural authentication for any divine revelation. ^[37]

B.3) God judges people based on their response to miracles

However, it must be admitted that this divine authentication is primarily meant for those who already have a relationship with God. As we have written elsewhere, miracles are not intended to produce faith in unbelievers, but rather to strengthen the faith of believers. ^[38] In fact, God withholds miraculous revelation from some because it merely results in their greater condemnation. ^[39]

Accordingly, the King said of those who had witnessed His miracles:

If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both Me and My Father. (John 15:22-25; cf. Matt 11:20-27; John 12:37-41)

Here, and in many other statements made by Christ, we see a balance in a biblical view of the purpose of miracles. First, while it is true that miracles do not guarantee faith in unbelievers, there is no denying their effect on some. Secondly, the reason that miracles do not have a saving effect on people is not because there is something lacking in the miracles to produce such a result. The problem is the corrupted and unregenerated heart and mind of unbelievers. This is, of course, true of the miracle of Creation and why those who see it are “without excuse” (Rom 1:20) for not recognizing it as a miracle, and why they will be judged for their stubbornness. Finally, while we would suggest that many over emphasize the objective value of miracles as an apologetic to unbelievers the above statement from Christ should caution anyone in claiming that His miracles have no apologetic value, because from God’s perspective, they definitely do, so much so that people will receive a greater judgment for viewing them and not believing them.

B.4) God’s miracles intervene in God’s natural laws

Elsewhere in Knowing Our God we have written:

[S]ome strains of anti-supernaturalism deny that divine miracles violate “natural laws” at all. However, the supernatural characteristic of miracles need not be interpreted as a disparagement of Nature, but is actually a recognition of its God-ordained power. In other words, it is because the natural processes that God has established in Creation are so stable and strong that the supernatural intervention of them is so recognizable and therefore miraculous. ^[40]

Indeed, the temporary suspension, violation, reversal, and breaking of natural laws was an obvious and necessary part of many miracles recorded in Scripture, and for miracles in general. Of course, pagan philosophers want to deny this. For example, the very influential seventeenth century Rationalists philosopher Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677) wrote:

Nature cannot be contravened, but . . . she preserves a fixed and immutable order. If anyone asserted that God acts in contravention to the laws of nature, he, ipso facto, would be compelled to assert that God acted against His own nature-an evident absurdity. ^[41]

This is nothing less than the worship of Creation rather than the Creator. Unfortunately, even among orthodox theologians, there is an unnecessary and unfounded crusade to deny that miracles momentarily suspend the normal laws of Nature. Accordingly, Dr. Geisler writes:

Theists define miracles in either a weak sense or a strong sense. Following Augustine, the weaker definition describes a miracle as “a portent which is not contrary to nature, but contrary to our knowledge of nature. . . .” Others, following Thomas Aquinas, define a miracle in the strong sense of an event that is outside nature’s power, something only done through supernatural power. [In this sense] A miracle is a divine intervention, a supernatural exception to the regular course of the natural world. ^[42]

Augustine (354–430), of course, popularly wrote in his City of God (c. 426):

We do, of course, call all portents [miracles] against nature, but they are not. For how is something against nature that happens by the will of God? How can this be when the will of so great a founder is without a doubt the nature of every created thing? And so a portent is not against nature, but against the nature which is known. ^[43]

Accordingly, we have already noted the difficulties of Augustine melding together the natural and supernatural. ^[44] Here we will address the erroneous thought that for God to intervene in Nature, is to act against Himself.

It would seem a great deal of this kind of thinking has come in response to David Hume’s arguments against miracles in the treatise noted above. Actually, Hume stated it as a fact that a miracle would violate the laws of Nature. ^[45] However, Hume’s real argument was actually based on a disbelief in the value of historical testimony, not that natural laws couldn’t be broken. He essentially said that such a break in natural laws would be so rare that the evidence for it, compared with the continual evidence for natural laws against it, would not be great enough to believe a miracle had occurred. Therefore, instead of addressing Hume’s skepticism regarding the value of history, (not to mention the nature of God and the truth of Scripture) many theologians have attempted to defend miracles by denying they violate Nature.

For example, the great Baptist theologian A. H. Strong (1836–1921) wrote:

[Hume states]: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.” Christian apologists have too often needlessly embarrassed their argument by accepting Hume’s definition. The stigma is entirely undeserved. If man can support the axe at the surface of the water while gravitation still acts upon it, God can certainly, at the prophet’s word, make the iron to swim, while gravitation still acts upon it [cf. 2 Kgs 6:6-7]. ^[46]

Contrary to this very intelligent scholar, it is not an embarrassment to accept Hume’s definition of a miracle, for it is the Bible’s own definition. And while Dr. Strong might have been correct in not interpreting every miracle as a violation of natural laws, as we will note below, some of those recorded in Scripture certainly did.

Nonetheless, this apparent mis-reaction to Hume has persisted in Christian scholarship today, resulting in the Evangelical anti-supernaturalism described above. For example, Colin Brown writes:

Many of the . . . miraculous events in the OT did not involve suspension of natural causes. The locusts which plagued Egypt were blown there by a strong east wind and were blown away by a strong west wind (Exod. 10: 13, 19). The arrival of the quails coincided with the spring migration (Exod. 16:13). [T]he manna . . . may have attracted the quails . . . The parting of the Red Sea was caused by “a strong east wind” blowing all night (Exod. 14:21). In such instances the event is a providential ordering of natural causes for the benefit of the people of God. ^[47]

Similarly, Millard Erickson writes in his popular, and otherwise helpful Christian Theology:

[The] suspending or breaking of the laws of nature usually introduces complications requiring a whole series of compensating miracles [so?]. In the story of Joshua’s long day (Josh. 10: 12-14), for example, numerous adjustments would have to be made, of which there is no hint in the narrative, if God actually stopped the revolution of the earth on its axis. [Never mind that Joshua asked specifically that the sun would stop in the sky and that the text says twice it did]. While this is certainly possible for an almighty God, there is no indication of it in the astronomical data. [Could not God have made the necessary “numerous adjustments”?]

There are two other problems, one psychological and one theological. Psychologically, the apparent disorderliness introduced into nature by the view that miracles are violations of natural law unnecessarily predisposes [unregenerated] scientists to be prejudiced against them. This definition makes miracles particularly difficult to defend. As a matter of fact, there are those who categorically reject miracles strictly on the basis of this definition. And, theologically, this view seems to make God work against himself, thus introducing a form of self-contradiction. . .

[W]hen miracles occur, natural forces are countered by supernatural force. In this view, the laws of nature are not suspended [really?]. They continue to operate, but supernatural force is introduced, negating the effect of the natural law [essentially breaking it it would seem]. In the case of the [floating] axhead [2 Ki. 6:5-6], for instance, the law of gravity continued to function in the vicinity of the axhead, but the unseen hand of God was underneath it, bearing it up, [breaking, violating, reversing the law of gravity in that place at that time] just as if a human hand were lifting it. This view has the advantage of regarding miracles as being genuinely supernatural or extranatural, but without being antinatural, as the [other] view makes them to be. ^[48]

Several responses are in order. First, it should be conceded that not all miracles can clearly be described as violations or suspensions of Nature. This is why we have elsewhere defined a miracle as an extraordinary revelation of God’s supernatural power . . . by which He intervenes in (not necessarily violates) the ordinary and natural processes He has ordained. For example, one thinks of the several timely storms recorded in Scripture (cf. Deut 11:13-14, 17; 1 Sam 12:16-18; Jonah 1:4; Amos 4:7). In such cases there is not a stopping or breaking of natural laws, but rather a use and manipulation of them such that they occur with a timing, location, and intensity to serve God’s purposes. Therefore, these manipulations of natural laws are just as miraculous as any other, although they do not seem to violate or suspend natural laws.

However, we would suggest that the manipulation of Nature in some miracles is so great that it should be considered a violation and alteration of natural laws. For example, Dr. Brown writes, “The parting of the Red Sea was caused by ‘a strong east wind’ blowing all night (Exod. 14:21). In such instances the event is a providential ordering of [merely] natural causes.” However, the Red Sea miracle required significantly more than a mere ordering of Nature, but also an unprecedented altering of it. In other words, how strong a wind would it have to be to open up a sea from shore to shore and cause the bottom to be dry (cf. Exod 14:21-2)? This was like no other “wind” that has ever blown. No matter how anti-supernaturalists want to massage the attributes of these events as the biblical text presents them, they are manipulations of natural laws to the point of temporarily, but significantly modifying and violating them.

Along these lines, C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) attempted to protect Christ’s miracles from the accusation of violating Nature by maintaining that they were simply a case of speeding up natural laws such as the body’s natural powers of healing. While it may be true that Christ at times did something similar to what Nature may do in time, the remarkable acceleration of those laws is a significant altering of them that anti-supernaturalists are reluctant to admit. For example, if an automobile is designed to cruise at sixty miles per hour and one day it travels at six hundred miles per hour, we would suggest its original design has been significantly altered.

Nonetheless, even if some miracles in Scripture can be explained as mere mild manipulations of natural laws, there simply is no honest way to re-explain all of them in this way. For example, the “sun” will not naturally be “stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day” (Josh 10:13). Even the “angel” who “shut the mouths of the lions” (Dan 6:22) performed a miracle that violated Nature, as hungry lions usually eat humans if nothing else is available. Water does not have any chemical properties that will cause it to turn into “choice wine” (John 2:9-10) or hold the weight of men walking on it (cf. Matt 14:25-29). There is no power in humans or Nature that will enable a “furious storm” to instantly become “completely calm” (Matt 8:24-26) upon command. Nor is there any power on Earth that will enable a man who has been flogged, crucified, stabbed, certified by all present (friend and foe alike) to be dead, and placed in a guarded tomb; to be seen living and well only three days later by a multitude of people.

The biblical examples of miracles over the usual laws of Nature could be multiplied, and none of them could have occurred without supernatural intervention and the actual suspension and violation of natural laws. All of Nature serves God in any way He sees fit, including either sustaining humans by maintaining natural laws, or amazing humans by temporarily breaking those same laws.

There is also a claim by anti-antisupernaturalists that a decision on the Creator’s part to intrude on His Creation is somehow contradictory to His perfection. As Dr. Erickson said above, the view that God violates Nature, “seems to make God work against himself, thus introducing a form of self-contradiction.” On the contrary, Nature is not God. God is the Person that created the thing we call Nature, and it is only a pantheistic ^[49] perspective that would make the “self-contradiction” Dr. Erickson speaks of possible. When God violates Nature, then, He is not violating Himself.

God’s miracles do indeed violate, break, reverse, and otherwise modify natural processes in order to achieve God’s purposes. Unfortunately, while some great theologians like Augustine have felt that fact disparages God, others have rightly (in our opinion), believed it actually glorifies Him. Accordingly, Vernon C. Grounds, a Chancellor of Denver Seminary wrote:

Undeniably nature has an order, but, fixed and dependable though it is, the order of nature is not iron-clad, a strait-jacket in which God finds himself helplessly bound. Biblically viewed, nature is plastic in the hands of its sovereign Creator. ^[50]

The respected Reformed theologian B. B. Warfield believed that: “miracles are not merely above nature or our understanding of it, but against nature, requiring an adequate cause, the Creator of nature himself.” ^[51] In addition, Warfield wrote:

It is equally inconceivable that His activities with reference to it [Nature], or even within it, should be confined to the operation of the laws which He has ordained for the regulation of its activities and not of His. What power has this little speck of derived being to exclude the operation upon it and within it of that almighty force to whose energy it owes both its existence and its persistence in being? Have its forces acquired such strength as to neutralize the power which called it into being? Or has it framed for itself a crust so hard as to isolate it from the omnipotence which plays about it and successfully to resist the power that made it? ^[52]

Likewise, J. I. Packer has stated, “There is nothing irrational about believing that God who made the world can still intrude creatively into it.” ^[53] Similarly, C. S Evans comments:

Sometimes it is argued that a miracle would be a sign of inconsistency on God’s part; God “would not violate the laws he has made.” However, natural laws are not normative ethical or legal principles that it would be wrong for God to violate. Nor does it seem that it would be inconsistent of God to perform some special action for a special reason on a special occasion. It is the sign of a brilliant stylist, and not an imperfection, for a writer to make an exception to a literary rule that she normally follows, and that a lesser writer may feel the need to slavishly obey. ^[54]

Along the same lines, James Orr wrote:

The definition of miracle, with Hume and others, as a ‘violation’ of the laws of nature, is a question-begging and objectionable one. It suggests a sanctity belonging to the usual order of nature which is by no means to be attributed to it, and precludes the view that nature itself, in the divine purpose, may be subordinate to a higher spiritual order, whose ends call for an action of God above and beyond what nature is capable of.

In nature itself one law crosses and modifies the action of another, and higher laws suspend or control the action of lower. Mechanical laws are over-ruled by chemical and vital. Gravitation is counteracted by the raising of the arm in obedience to an act of will. But nothing in nature is ‘violated’ thereby. The whole system of nature, in its reciprocal relations, is a unity, and all, in the last resort, depends on God, whose will, guided by His wisdom, is the ultimate law-the law of all laws, cause in all causes. ^[55]

More recently, the Christian philosopher William Abraham has agreed that the “classical definition” of miracles is “events which violate a law of nature.” ^[56] Elsewhere he explains:

A further worry is that if God intervenes [into Nature], then his intervention must somehow be capricious and unpredictable. Now certainly it will not be predictable, for God remains free in all that he does. It will not, however, be capricious. If God intervenes, we can be sure that he will do so for some legitimate intention or purpose. It will, to be sure, often be very difficult to discern why God intervenes or, for that matter, why he does not intervene. His ways are not always our ways or our thoughts his thoughts. But that his action should be capricious seems on the face of it false. ^[57]

Similarly, we have elsewhere quoted John Gerstner (1914-1996) who pointed out a common misunderstanding when he writes:

[T]he argument for miracle is not meant to be an argument against the regularity of nature. It is merely an argument against the regularity of nature in every particular instance. Indeed the argument for miracle rests on the regularity of nature generally. There is no such thing as supernatural events except as they are seen in relation to the natural. And they would not be extraordinary if there were no ordinary against which background they are seen. ^[58]

Not only are such concessions to anti-supernaturalists unnecessary in somehow trying to protect God’s character, they are equally unnecessary in an attempt to impress unbelieving humanity. We quoted Dr. Erickson above as stating, “the apparent disorderliness introduced into nature by the view that miracles are violations of natural law unnecessarily predisposes scientists to be prejudiced against them.” As demonstrated above (section B.1), miracles are primarily intended to impress in a preexisting atmosphere of God given faith. The effort of making erroneous concessions to unbelievers to try to make miracles more acceptable to them ignores this truth. Biblical miracles were indeed complete violations of natural laws, and we need to recognize the possibility that God intends to offend the mind of unbelievers with His miracles, not console them in their sinful state. Such concessions simply result in a lie.

Robert Reymond, Professor of Systematic Theology at Knox Theological Seminary is rather refreshing regarding particularly Evangelical anti-supernaturalism when writes:

I have no sympathy with the contention of many theologians that miracles of power are simply interventions of God into human affairs in ways which run counter to known or observable processes but which do not really violate the laws of nature. Some may be such, but others are clearly contrary to the laws of nature, such as Jesus’ changing of water into wine, and it seems to me that it is catering too much to modern man’s hostility to the whole idea of the supernatural so to define biblical miracles that they are emptied of their supernatural uniqueness. I believe that the [Westminster] Confession of Faith more accurately reflects the true situation when it states: “God, in His ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at His pleasure” (IV/iii, emphasis supplied). ^[59]

A related error to the denial of the violation of Nature in divine miracles is a misconception of divine providence. Several respected Evangelical theologians label supernatural manipulations of Nature as divine providence, then exclude the miraculous from the idea of divine providence, and therefore make such actions non-supernatural. For example, the rightly respected Christian apologist Norm Geisler reveals a reluctance to define a miracle as a supernatural manipulation of natural forces when he writes:

That they [natural laws] are not miracles does not mean they do not belong to God’s special providence. He uses them and is in control of them. We can be sure that sometimes he intervenes in their operation in dramatic ways. A fog at Normandy aided the Allied Forces’ invasion of Europe on D-Day and the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany. Fog has natural causes, but the timing of this one was an evidence of God’s providence. But it was no miracle. Bullets bouncing off the chests of Allied soldiers would have been a miracle. . . .

Some events are caused by God indirectly, not directly. That is, God uses natural laws to accomplish them. These may be quite remarkable and may stimulate faith, but they are not supernatural. Robert Muller gathered his English orphans around the dining table and gave thanks for food they did not at that moment have to eat. At that time a wagon loaded with bread broke down in front of the orphanage, and all of it was given to Muller. That was an act of wonderful providence, but it was not a miracle. ^[60]

First, there is an erroneous claim here that anything labeled as divine providence is not miraculous. Accordingly, when God manipulates “natural laws” it is simply divine providence. As we wrote elsewhere, “it is important to distinguish between the supernatural power in miracles from the divine power working in Nature, if we are to distinguish miracles at all.” ^[61]

We would suggest this same failure to distinguish between God’s power operating in the ordinary processes of Nature from the supernatural power that operates in miracles, is a fundamental error in Wayne Grudem’s discussion of miracles in his Systematic Theology. In fact, he states clearly that he does not want to define a miracle as “a different kind of working by God.” ^[62] More specifically, Dr. Grudem’s error would seem to be based on an oversimplified definition of divine providence which is how, “God preserves, controls, and governs all things.” ^[63]

What Dr. Grudem apparently fails to recognize is that God “governs all things” through both natural processes implemented and maintained by His power, and, on rare occasions, supernatural events which interrupt and manipulate those processes. The former means of divine governance properly comes under the heading of providence, but the latter is a miracle, and it is best to distinguish the two.

Dr. Grudem confuses the issue by referring to the natural processes God has implemented as continuous divine “intervention.” ^[64] And because he also considers miracles as divine intervention, therefore failing to distinguish the natural from the supernatural, he also drops several important attributes from his definition of a miracle. For example, he rejects the idea that a miracle is “a direct intervention of God in the world,” ^[65] or “an exception to a natural law.” ^[66] While we agree that the natural processes that maintain Creation depend on the continual power of God operating within them (i.e. providence), we suggest that a miracle can only be noticed because it is “an exception to a natural law.”

B.5) Scientific advances have not and will not explain away biblical miracles

As noted above, anti-supernaturalists insist that miracles be understood merely as operating according to ongoing but unknown natural laws. Again, Augustine heavily influenced this kind of thinking. More recently, the influential British philosopher Patrick Nowell-Smith (1915-2006) has written:

No matter how strange an event someone reports, the statement that it must have been due to a supernatural agent cannot be a part of that report. [Just because] no scientist can at present explain certain phenomena, it does not follow that the phenomena are inexplicable by scientific methods, still less that they must be attributed to supernatural agents. . . . [T]here is still the possibility that science may be able, in the future, to offer an explanation which, though couched in quite new terms, remains strictly scientific. ^[67]

This same idea was proposed by the twentieth century Cambridge philosopher of religion F. R. Tennant when he said that no one is in a position to claim that certain events are miraculous, “so long as our scientific knowledge of Nature is inexhaustive.” ^[68]

What is implied here is that future scientific discoveries will provide natural explanations for miracles, including the biblical ones. More recently, the philosopher Anthony Flew has said:

The very essence of the work of the scientist demands being open to new possibilities in observations of nature. If new observations conflict with present theories, the scientist needs to revise his or her theories, not blame the event on something supernatural. Thus the best approach to understanding an anomalous event, which might otherwise be regarded as a miracle, is always to expand our understanding of the potentialities of nature. Rather than claiming we saw something supernatural, we should recognize that nature is capable of doing more than we had expected. And so it becomes impossible a priori ever to identify an event as a miracle. ^[69]

 

Such theories may initially seem to have some value. Except for the fact that several thousand years later we are still waiting for believable scientific explanations for the miracles recorded in Scripture. It would seem such skeptics would have us wait many more thousands of years expecting a scientist to “naturally” explain how Christ walked on water and multiplied a little fish and bread to feed thousands. If they want to wait, they can wait, but any reasonable person who believes in God will accept the biblical explanations at face value. In fact, we would suggest that because God obviously intended such miracles to be supernatural, we can rest assured that no such undiscovered natural processes even exist.

As C. S. Lewis wrote in his study on miracles:

You and I may not agree, even by the end of this book, as to whether miracles happen or not. But at least let us not talk nonsense. Let us not allow vague rhetoric about the march of science to fool us into supposing that the most complicated [modern] account of birth, in terms of genes and spermatozoa, leaves us any more convinced than we were before that nature does not send babies to young women who ‘know not a man’. ^[70]

We will add that there is a tendency as well to allow modern science to increasingly dilute miracles as well. It is suggested that just because we think we have figured out how something works, it necessarily ceases to be a miracle. However, the severe limits of scientific discovery discussed elsewhere argue against this. ^[71]

Modern botanical research has done nothing to diminish even the “ordinary miracle” of a daffodil. While scientists have been able to put a label on the process by which the flower produces its energy (photosynthesis), they have no clue as to how such a remarkable process ever developed, and few clues as to how it really works, and they certainly cannot mechanically duplicate it. The honest scientist, whether they are studying plants, animals, or the stars, will admit that every “discovery” of what they think is true, only produces dozens of more questions, many of which will never be answered this side of meeting the Creator.

While modern science still has not given a plausible explanation for any of the biblical miracles, nor do we have reason to ever expect them to, the suggestion that they may some day do so does not discount such miracles. While we have no evidence for it, God may increase the extraordinariness of miracles to match the technological advance of the people He is purposing to effect. Just because a miracle may be able to be explained by future science, does not mean that God did not intend it to be perceived as supernatural at the time. We have quoted Bernard Ramm elsewhere concerning humanity’s “alphabet of power” by which they readily recognize a miracle:

Christian evidences deals with the action of God in transcending the alphabets of power of the various cultures and periods into which his revelation came. When God so transcends an alphabet of power, he has prepared the situation. God has controlled the alphabet of power of the people to whom he shall speak; he has chosen, furthermore, to act supernaturally in connection with his plans of revelation and redemption. ^[72]

Along these lines, Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsay have written:

Suppose by the year 2000 scientists are able to revive dead bodies. That is not the same thing as saying that in A.D. 29 it was a natural phenomenon to revivify a dead body. If the scientist has achieved that ability by A.D. 2000, does that prove that it was not a supernatural event two thousand years earlier? Because one could resurrect a body in A.D. 2000 by natural means does not imply that that was the case two millennia earlier. Manifestly, raising a body from the dead, as Christ’s body was raised, was something which could have been done-at that time in any case-only by the immediate exercise of divine power. Whatever scientists may be able to do in the future could hardly disprove a past miracle. Something may be a miracle in A.D. 29 that is not a miracle in A.D. 2029. ^[73]

A related example would be the relationship between the virgin birth of Christ and our ability to artificially inseminate women today. While we can make virgins pregnant today “without a man,” as Lewis put it above, no doctor knowing the complexities of such a procedure today would claim that it could have been done two thousand years ago, and apart from the artificial means involved in invitro fertilization.

We have also seen that particularly Evangelical anti-supernaturalists have downgraded Christ’s miracles by attributing them to some sort of super knowledge, rather than super power. There is no reason to believe this, whether biblically, scientifically, or reasonably. Nonetheless, John Gerstner remarks:

[I]f Christ had had the kind of knowledge which this theory attributes to him, such knowledge would have been as miraculous as the miracles it attempts to explain away. For centuries before and for centuries after, no other person but this solitary, untutored Jew knew how to walk on water. Modern science has performed many amazing feats in this century, but it still is nowhere nearer than it was in Jesus’ day to multiplying loaves and fishes by a mere word. ^[74]

Finally, many have suggested that in our own more technologically advanced world, that the miracles of Christ, the Prophets, and Apostles would not have the same effect. More specifically, the claim is that these miracles were believed because the people were especially ignorant or gullible. This was one of David Hume’s foundational premises for denying the existence of miracles.

In reply, Dr. Geisler writes: “In both New and Old Testament contexts, people did not show naïve acceptance of every alleged word or act from God. Like moderns, they wanted proof.” ^[75] Along the same lines, Stephen T. Davis says:

The implication seems to be that the people of New Testament times were much more backward and superstitious than we are; that is why they were prepared to believe in miracles at the drop of a hat. They just didn’t have the great benefit of our advanced scientific knowledge and reasoning power.

But surely this is misleading. If belief in miracles was so commonplace during ignorant times like the first century, why were such biblical miracles as Jesus’ turning water into wine or Jesus’ being raised from the dead taken to be so significant? It seems that the idea of water being turned into wine or of a dead man living again was no less intellectually scandalous to first-century folk than it is to us. (Note the reaction of the apostle Thomas to talk of the resurrection of Jesus in John 20, or of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers to that same sort of talk in Acts 17.) ^[76]

In any age of human existence, it is “The fool [who] says in his heart, “There is no God” (Ps 14:1), and likewise denies His miraculous deeds.

Extras & Endnotes

A Devotion to Dad

Father, we exalt in your ability and willingness to show yourself mighty in the miracles you have done. From Creation to Resurrection, you have demonstrated Yourself worthy of our worship. Help us to defend the miracles of Scripture against those who would steal Your glory by attacking them. And help us to treasure the miracles recorded in Scripture as a revelation of what kind of God we serve.

Gauging Your Grasp

1. How do we define anti-supernaturalism?
2. What are the distinguishing characteristics of the different types of anti-supernaturalism we discuss?
3. Who are some influential Christian scholars and theologians who seem to go to great lengths to give natural explanations for the miracles in the Bible?
4. What is your opinion of the more “natural” explanations for the miracles recorded in Scripture?
5. What are some of the unfortunate consequences of anti-supernaturalism toward the miracles recorded in Scripture.
6. What are some of our arguments against anti-supernaturalism? Would you have additional ones?
7. Why do some anti-supernaturalists want to deny that divine miracles violate natural laws? What is our response to this perspective? What is your response?
8. Why do we claim that no scientific understandings will undermine the purpose He has for the miracles recorded in Scripture? Do you agree or disagree?

Recommended Reading

• C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (Macmillan, 1947).
• In Defense of Miracles, Douglas Geivett, Gary R. Habermas, eds. (Intervarsity, 1997). Several good articles concerning the more philosophical questions regarding miracles.
• Jesus the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological Study, Graham Twelftree, (Intervarsity, 1999). A reviewer in JETS writes:

Twelftree sets forth four objectives. He seeks to identify (a) how the Gospel writers understood Jesus’ miracles; (b) how Jesus most likely understood them (these two objectives are covered through part 3); (c) to what extent the miracle stories reflect “what actually happened”; and (d) what the implications are for the quest for the historical Jesus (covered in the book’s final parts). . . .

Twelftree has done admirably in presenting just such a corrective, and we are in his debt for this magnificent treatment of the intricate and intrinsic relationship of Gospel miracles to the historical Jesus. ^[77]

• Yun, Brother and Paul Hattaway, The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun (Monarch Books, 2002)- A good book that honestly chronicles modern day miracles with biblical circumstances and characteristics, without a super-supernaturalist or mega mystical agenda.

Publications & Particulars

1. Norm Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Baker, 1999), 521. ↑

2. Reference unavailable. ↑

3. Anthony Flew, “Neo-Humean Arguments About The Miraculous” in In Defense of Miracles, Douglas Geivett, Gary R. Habermas, eds. (Intervarsity, 1997), 45. ↑

4. Quoted by Geisler, 457. ↑

5. For further discussion of David’s Hume’s historical arguments against miracles see chapter 2.7. ↑

6. For further discussion of deism and rationalism see chapter 2.10.9. ↑

7. Geivett and Habermas, 11. ↑

8. Geisler, 521. ↑

9. Norm Geisler, Introduction to Christian Philosophy (Baker, 1980), 262. ↑

10. Rudolph Bultmann, “The New Testament and Mythology” in Kerygma and Myth, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (Harper and Row, 1961), 5. However, Geivett and Habermas note:

    While the last few decades of the twentieth century have witnessed the efflorescence of various approaches to the study of miracles, much of recent critical theological thought has been more open to some sense of God’s acting in history. . . . One notable exception to this trend is the position adopted by the controversial Jesus Seminar. Acknowledging the need for further research into the historical Jesus, these scholars favor a return to a mythical approach to the Gospels, more in concert with the methodologies of Strauss and Bultmann. (13). ↑

11. J. I. Packer, Concise Theology (Tyndale House, 1993), 58. ↑

12. Excerpt from section 4.13.B. ↑

13. James Orr, Revelation and Inspiration (Eerdmans, 1952), 131-3. ↑

14. Colin Brown, “Miracle,” New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (NIDNT) Colin Brown ed., 4 vols. (Zondervan, 1986), 2:628. ↑

15. Colin Brown, “Miracle,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE), Geoffrey W. Bromiley ed., 4 vols., (Eerdmans, 1988), 3:372. It is somewhat difficult to ascertain what Dr. Brown believes as, to his credit, he remarks in his book, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Eerdmans, 1984), that, “I have to confess that I am more than ever convinced that we cannot have Christianity without the miracle-working Jesus of the four Gospels.” (vii). ↑

16. Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed., (Baker, 1998), 432. ↑

17. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit: A Study of the Religious and Charismatic Experience of Jesus and the First Christians as Reflected in the New Testament (Westminster Press, 1975), 71-2. ↑

18. For further discussion of rationalism see chapter 2.9. ↑

19. For further discussion of divine authentication see sections 3.1.C-D and 7.1.B.5. ↑

20. Benjamin B. Warfield, “Christian Supernaturalism” in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, reprint, 10 vols. (Baker, 2000), IX:29. ↑

21. Gordon H. Clark, “Miracles, History, and Natural Law,” in The Evangelical Quarterly, 1940, Volume XII, p. 24. ↑

22. For further discussion of the process of saving faith see chapters 4.16; 6.2-3 ↑

23. Excerpt from section 10.1.B ↑

24. Many of the abuses, frauds, and doctrinal errors of super-supernaturalism have been detailed by John MacArthur in Charismatic Chaos (Zondervan Publishing House, 1992) and even the Charismatic Bible teacher Hank Hanegraaff in Counterfeit Revival (Word, 1997). ↑

25. Jonathan Edwards, Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, introduction; online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

26. H. D. Lewis, Philosophy of Religion (English Universities Press, 1965), 303. ↑

27. Ronald Nash, “Miracles & Conceptual Systems” in Geivett and Habermas, 116. ↑

28. Winfried Corduan, “Recognizing a Miracle” in Geivett and Habermas, 107. ↑

29. For further discussion regarding the effect of the unregenerated sinful nature on the epistemological abilities of humans see chapters 4.12-14. ↑

30. Bernard Ramm in Revelation and the Bible: Contemporary Evangelical Thought, Carl F. H. ed. (Baker, 1958), 258. ↑

31. For further discussion of the very real supernatural nature of the antichrist’s miracle working see chapter 10.6. ↑

32. For examples of the supernatural power of the spiritual regeneration that only occurs in conjunction with the Christian Gospel see applicable sections of Book 5: Biblical Apologetics. ↑

33. For examples of modern day miracles see esp. chapter 10.2. ↑

34. R.C. Sproul in Miracles and Modern Thought, Norm Geisler ed. (Probe Ministries, 1982), 155. ↑

35. William Abraham, Divine Revelation and the Limits of Historical Criticism (Oxford, 1982), 167. ↑

36. For further discussion of fideism see chapter 2.10. ↑

37. For further discussion of the need for objective evidence for biblical faith see chapters 6.12-14. ↑

38. For further discussion of the fact that divine miracles are especially intended for believers rather than unbelievers see section 11.6.E. ↑

39. For further discussion regarding the response of the unregenerate to miracles see section 4.13.B. ↑

40. Excerpt from section 10.2.A.6. ↑

41. Benedict Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise, trans. by R. H. M. Elwes (Dover, 1951). ↑

42. Geisler, BECA, 450. ↑

43. Saint Augustine, City of God, 12, 21.8; online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

44. For further discussion of the importance of distinguishing between the natural and supernatural see section 10.2.A.6. ↑

45. Webster’s defines “nature” is several ways including, 1) “a creative and controlling force in the universe,” and 2) “the external world in its entirety.” (789). Of course a Christian world view would only accept the latter, and this is all we mean by the term. ↑

46. Augustus H. Strong, Systematic Theology, 3 Vols. (Judson, 1907, 1953), 121. ↑

47. Brown, NIDNT, 2:628. It seems a little contradictory for Dr. Brown to consistently say that the miracles of the Bible were recognized as such because they, “differed radically from [the observers’] expectations based on the normal course of nature” (281), but then to insist that the Bible does “stress” that such phenomena are not “violations of nature” (Ibid.). ↑

48. Erickson, 433. ↑

49. Geisler writes concerning pantheism:

    Means all (“pan”) is God (“theism”). It is the worldview held by most Hindus, many Buddhists, and other New Age religions. It is also the worldview of Christian Science, Unity, and Scientology. According to pantheism, God “is all in all.” God pervades all things, contains all things, subsumes all things, and is found within all things. Nothing exists apart from God, and all things are in some way identified with God. The world is God, and God is the world. But more precisely, in pantheism all is God, and God is all. (BECA, 580) ↑

50. Wycliffe Dictionary of Theology (WDT), Everett F. Harrison, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Carl F. Henry eds., (Hendrickson, 1960, 1999), 357. ↑

51. John H. Gerstner, “Warfield’s Case for Biblical Inerrancy” in God’s Inerrant Word, John Warwick Montgomery ed. (Bethany Fellowship, 1974), 125. ↑

52. Warfield, IX:35. ↑

53. Packer, 58. ↑

54. C. S. Evans, Faith Beyond Reason (Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 58. ↑

55. Orr, 112 ↑

56. William Abraham, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Prentice-Hall, 1985), 153. ↑

57. Ibid., 198 ↑

58. Gerstner, 30-1. ↑

59. Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Thomas Nelson, 1998), 409. ↑

60. Geisler, BECA 472-3. On the contrary, we would suggest that such apparently supernatural manipulations of Nature are miracles. In fact, elsewhere Geisler is willing to call such events a “class two” miracle, something that R. F. Holland calls a “contingency” miracle, and W. Corduan refers to as a “constellation” miracle. ↑

61. Excerpt from section 10.2.A.6. ↑

62. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Zondervan, 1994), 356. ↑

63. Ibid., 355. ↑

64. Ibid. ↑

65. Ibid. ↑

66. Ibid., 356. ↑

67. M. Nowell-Smith as cited in New Essays in Philosophy Theology, Anthony Flew and Alasdaire MacIntyre eds. (Macmillan, 1955), 246-8. ↑

68. Brown, Critical Mind, 219. ↑

69. Corduan, 100. ↑

70. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 59. ↑

71. For a fuller discussion of science from a Christian perspective see 2.5.B. ↑

72. Bernard Ramm, Henry, Bible, 261. ↑

73. R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsey, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1984), 283. ↑

74. Gerstner, 38. ↑

75. Geisler, BECA, 454. ↑

76. Stephen T. Davis, “God’s Actions” in Geivett and Habermas, 174. ↑

77. Paul Copan, JETS 44:2 (June 2001), 337-8. ↑