Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Miracles - Coggle Diagram
Miracles
The significance of these views for religion
Edward Schillebeeckx
Interprets miracles as having a spiritual or metaphorical meaning for today
Perhaps Jesus is the source of calm in people's lives
Wright
Jesus is not only healing individuals, but also groups that have been excluded from society, reuniting the socially excluded, ritually unclean, and separate back into a relationship with God
Jesus' miracles show greater authority than simply a power to alter the way the universe usually works
Jesus is establishing God's Kingdom on Earth
John
John 9:1-41 Jesus heals a man
It is possible that this action could be read as a sign of Jesus' power, or as having a message for the sick today, that Jesus can heal them.
A pointer to the power of God working in Jesus
The resurrection
Wight suggests that the belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead was the reason why Jesus' disciples regrouped and rapidly changed their traditional worship practices to focus on Jesus
The Christian Church would not have developed without the resurrection
The resurrection and the authority and divinity of Jesus
Greatest miracle
Discloses God in a new and starling way
Vindicates his certainty in the future Kingdom of God
The full and final revelation of Jesus
Reveals the glorified transformed being
Realisation that the weak can mediate God's revelation
Realist and anti-realist views
Realism and miracles
Miracles are objectively real interventions by God into the affairs of people
Aquinas' 3 types of miracles
Events done by God which nature could never do
Make the sun go backwards
Events done by God which nature can do but not in that order
Resurrection; water into wine
An event which could happen naturally but where God breaks the rules of nature
Instantly curing a disease which would have taken doctors time
Strengths
Preserves faith in an interventionist God
Miracles retain their traditional significance
Don't have to be violations of the laws of nature (Vardy)
Can be defended with Swinburne's principles
Weaknesses
Inconsistencies between Gospels chronologically, regarding audiences and purpose, and between stories
Hume's arguments against the evidence
Implications for the Problem of Evil (Wiles)
Unverifiable/unfalsifiable
Griffin: unrealistic metaphorically speaking
Propositional revelation
Special revelation
A realist alternative to Wiles: Peter Vardy
If we redefine miracles as 'violations of the laws of nature as we understand it', the perhaps we do not know when God has intervened in the world, or how his interventions work
Argues God cannot intervene regularly as if there are too many miraculous interventions to save us from ourselves then we would lose our free-will
SImilarly, HIck argues it helps us to become more like God
Strengths
Fits with Hume's epistemology
Leibniz argues that if people are to have confidence in the laws of nature then God can't intervene regularly to prevent suffering
Weakness
The evidential problem of evil questions why the excess of suffering
Anti-realism and miracles
Not objective factual interventions but subjective interpretations of profound events with religious significance
Non-propositional revelation
Strengths
Consistent with analysis of evidence (Eg. Hume's first argument against miracles)
Preserve Christian belief for a modern audience
Griffin: more realistic theologically
Polkinghorne: could retain intervention and providence
Tillich: true to original interpretation of miracles in scripture (eg. Semeion - signs)
Otto: consistent with numinous experiences
Hick/Kant: transcendent God is ultimately unknowable
Weaknesses
Damages faith (fideism)
Undermines traditional significance of miracles
Flew: yet more qualifications
Unacceptable to most Christians
R F Holland
Defines a miracle as 'a remarkable ad beneficial coincidence that is interpreted in a religious fashion'
Focuses on interpretation
Tillich
A sign event - something of religious significance and tell us something about God
Miracles do not violate the laws of nature
The laws of nature (eg. time, identity, space) cannot be violated - we could not make sense of a world where these could be violated
Miracles point towards 'the mystery of being'
Violation of natural law or natural event
Hume's realist definition of miracles
A violation of the laws of nature by the actions of a divine being
Examples of miracles that violate the laws of nature
Feeding the 5000
Walking on water
Resurrection
Comparison of the key ideas of David Hume and Maurice Wiles on miracles
Hume's realist criticism of miracles
Relations of ideas: many of the things that we assume to be true of the world are in fact nothing more than relationships we create between our ideas of things in the world
Pragmatic common-sense attitude
We have to accept and live with the fact that we will just never know these thing for certain
Empirical scepticism
Hume's realist definition of miracles
A violation of the laws of nature by the actions of a divine being
Hume's central criticism of miracles
'A wise man apportions belief to the evidence'
We should only believe that which we have evidence for
Given that a violation of the laws of nature is the least likely of events, this can never be the case. Therefore, no amount of witness testimony should convince us that miracles happen.
Hume's criticism of witness testimony
Inductive
There is insufficient testimony
Insufficient witnesses of good source
Even good witnesses (such as Tertullian, Cardinal of Retz, and magistrates in Rome) are not good enough because they are still outweighed by the laws of nature and are more likely to be false
We have a tendency to believe
We are gullible
Support from Dawkins' evolutionary argument concerning gullibility
We have evolved gullibility to help us survive
'Ignorant and barbarous' nations
Could refer to the time of miracles: lack of education; lack of scientific understanding
Or could refer to contemporary regions, in which case Hume could be accused of cultural imperialism
The miracle claims of different religions are self-defeating
Different religions cannot all be true / cancel each other out
Wiles
The idea of an omnibenevolent God who intervenes to break the laws of nature in selective instances is contradictory
Develops on the logical problem of evil and suffering
If we accept that God has intervened in some instances, then we move from believing in something absurd to something morally problematic
Deism
The only action of God in the universe was the act of creation
This creates a problem for Christians as much of the OT and NT refer to an interventionist God and it would not be clear what is left for Christians to believe in
Support for Wiles
Rudolf Bultmann
Argued we should redefine these biblical narratives as myths that need to be demythologized in order to uncover their hidden messages, like finding the moral behind a story
Against Wiles
Many Christians take the virgin birth and resurrection literally
It would be unacceptable to take such a liberal interpretation of scripture
A realist alternative to Wiles: Peter Vardy
Differing understandings of 'miracles'
The significance of miracles for religious belief
'Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles' - Acts 2:22
Belief in Christianity depends on miracles
Incarnation
The virgin birth
Taking on the sin of the world
Salvation through resurrection
Only 2 miracles appear in all 4 gospels
Feeding of the 5000
Resurrection
The Synoptic Gospels
Written about 30 years after Jesus' death
Biographical accounts of Jesus' life
Gospel of John
Written about 30 years after the fall of Jerusalem (70CE)
Miracles were a sign of Jesus' status as the Son of God