How do you tell the difference between a miracle and coincidence?
The idea that supernatural forces make things happen in the natural world is one that fascinates everyone, skeptic and believer alike.
As far back as we have record, people have claimed to experience and perform miracles. These range from voices thundering from heaven to controlling the weather to defying the laws of physics to healing incurable diseases to receiving divine assistance in war. Ancient societies abound with claims of miracles. And although they don’t always make big news, modern society abounds with them too.
Some of us may have witnessed miraculous events ourselves. Others might have had miracles recounted to us by trustworthy people who claim to have witnessed them. And most of us, probably, have had experiences that seem to be the result of God’s direct work in our lives, but could also easily be attributable to natural causes.
You might know the kind I’m talking about. Maybe, after praying for months about your career, in a sudden moment it all seems clear. Maybe in church on Sunday morning a song moves you and you feel closely connected to God. Maybe you recover quickly from a serious illness, or narrowly avoid an accident that could have killed you. You find the right man or woman when you’ve just about given up hope. You find that you have a spiritual gift that you never expected you’d have. Your character, or someone else’s character, undergoes a dramatic change as a result of a relationship with God. We’d like to attribute this to God, and we’d like to thank God for making it happen, but it can easily be naturally explained. They could just be coincidences.
Why does this matter? Because when our faith in God is struggling, one of the first things we should do is fall back on our greatest experiences with God. We can remember what God’s done for us in the past, and know that he’s still there for us now. But when we have this uncertainty — when we can’t even be sure that those past experiences were real God-experiences or not — it’s harder to fall back on those.
So is it possible to turn that uncertainty into certainty? If our culture has anything to say about it, the answer is no. While the vast majority of people believe miracles happen [http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2012/07/millennials-beliefs-table.gif], no one can really agree on what a miracle is. You can take any account of a miracle, and there are thousands of people who will forcefully deny its authenticity or miraculousness. There is not a single event in recorded history that every believer in miracles agrees both took place and was in fact miraculous.
When it comes to events that we haven’t personally experienced, a lot of us seem to be inclined to follow the logic of the eighteenth-century Scottish skeptic David Hume. Hume defined a miracle as “a transgression of a law of nature by the particular coalition of the Deity.” He did not argue necessarily that miracles were impossible, but that it is always more rational to believe that any given event occurred naturally rather than miraculously. The laws of nature, he argued, are always observed to work, and all our experience indicates that the laws of nature are inviolable. So if we see something that appears to contradict that experience, although there is an infinitesimal chance that it could be miraculous, it’s always more reasonable to interpret that event in line with the universal human experience that the laws of nature are inviolable. Even if a law of nature appears to have been violated, rather than identify an event as a miracle, we ought to rethink our view of the laws of nature. Hence, you can never confidently identify any event as miraculous. Even though his works are nearly 250 years old and have been argued over since the time they were published, that line of thinking is very popular in our culture, I think.
There are lots of problems with Hume’s argument, which I will address in future posts. The one I want to focus on here is his definition of a miracle, because it directly relates to the topic at hand. He defines a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature, which would imply that any event that does not violate the laws of nature is merely a coincidence.
I think this definition is totally wrong. Miracles don’t have to violate the laws of nature. Most of the miracles Jesus performed were things like healing the sick and casting out demons. Jesus himself identifies these things as miracles, but they can also occur naturally. On rare occasions, people experience spontaneous remission of serious illnesses and severe psychological problems. Though we don’t fully understand the mechanism, it can happen naturally. Is it possible that, rather than God literally reaching down and rearranging molecules in a cripple’s body, Jesus’ word activated that natural healing mechanism in those who had faith? It’s a tricky distinction to make, and this can’t explain all of Jesus’ miracles, but it could explain some. Other examples of this can be found elsewhere. The ten plagues of Egypt, while clearly indicated to be miraculous, consisted of mostly extreme versions of natural occurrences like hailstorms, infestations, and plagues.
The miracle in these cases was not that laws of nature were violent. The miracle was that God directed and made things happen in a way that accomplished his will. This doesn’t violate any laws of nature. Laws of nature have only to do with what nature can do. They don’t dictate that a supernatural being can’t act in the natural world. And if God can intervene miraculously via the natural occurrence of an earthquake, that means that God can intervene in our lives using either supernatural or perfectly natural means. You can identify a miracle not by how spectacular it is, but what God’s role in it was, and whether the result was the accomplishment of God’s will.
God can intervene by clearly supernatural acts, but he can also intervene with apparently natural occurrences. The Bible presents both of them as miracles, not based on how spectacular they were, but based on God’s role in them.
So how do we know what God’s role was in an event? Here, context is everything. If someone spontaneously recovers from a serious illness, that might not be miraculous. If you pray for someone, and then they spontaneously recover from that illness, then you could conclude that God intervened. I’m not sure the fact that it could have occurred naturally should dissuade us from calling it a miracle. Otherwise, we would have to refrain from acknowledging some of Jesus’ healings as miracles, too.
I suppose if we really wanted, we could draw some distinction between a miracle and “mere” divine intervention. But I’m not sure the distinction really matters. Sometimes he does it in spectacular fashion, and sometimes he does it in typical fashion, but either way, God intervenes in our world to bring about his will. That is, effectively, miraculous in and of itself.
If you believe in a God who answers prayer, then if you pray for something and receive it, then it’s very reasonable to think that God has answered your prayer and intervened in your life. If something happens to you, or you’re able to do something, that promotes God’s will in the world — especially if you would not have done it if you didn’t believe — it’s quite reasonable to think God intervened to make it happen. And God’s intervention, not the spectacle it creates, is what separates the amazing natural occurrences from the miraculous. So does it need to be spectacular to be effectively miraculous? I don’t think it does.
In fact, sometimes God working by natural means is even greater and more meaningful than supernatural. Take the writing of the Gospels, for example. It’s generally accepted that God did not dictate the words of the Gospels to the authors, but he directed their hearts as they wrote in their own style, from their own perspectives, so that the words were as he wanted them to be. It’s not miraculous by the traditional definition, but it made a much bigger impact than an ax head floating on water (2 Kings 6:1-7).
Unfortunately, that doesn’t remove the uncertainty; in fact, it may make it worse. But this is in fact the greatest flaw in Hume’s argument: It imposes an impossible burden of proof on the one claiming a miracle. To Hume, if something defies our understanding of how things work, then we should reinterpret our understanding of how things work, and never attribute it to supernatural causes. In other words, we should always assume the conclusion. If it could have a natural explanation, then we should assume it does. That’s a standard of proof we don’t use in any other situation. And we are not justified in using it here, because miracles do not violate any universal human experience or the laws of nature.
The mere presence of an alternative explanation never means we should automatically accept it. That’s exactly what Hume’s argument requires we do regarding miracles. Effectively, the only way his argument works, and that we can’t identify anything as miraculous, is if we start out by rejecting miracles and demand to be convinced. If we already believe in a God who acts in this world, we have no reason or obligation to start from that perspective.
Based on all this, I think a better definition of a miracle would be: “God intervening in the affairs of this world in a way that changes the course of what would have happened if he had not intervened.”
So we can point to any time in our lives that God has intervened to make some positive differences, be it through a spectacular miracle or a changed heart, and know that both kinds of divine intervention are profoundly meaningful and effective. We should thank God for what he’s done in our lives, spectacular and non-spectacular, and remember it with confidence. Because God intervenes in the world and changes us and helps us do his will, our lives can be more impactful than a miracle.
