Concept
Miracle
Overview
A miracle is an event that cannot be explained by natural or scientific laws and accordingly gets attributed to some supernatural or preternatural cause. Various religions often attribute a phenomenon characterized as miraculous to the actions of a supernatural being, especially by a deity, a miracle worker, a saint, or a religious leader.
Informally, English-speakers often use the word miracle to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood (e.g. "the miracle of childbirth"). Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.
A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many writers to dismiss miracles as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed (for instance) by Thomas Jefferson, and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God or Allah regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, may work without, above, or against it as well.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Miracle is discussed.
We may, in fact, say that a miracle is an event of which the causes cannot be explained by the natural reason through a reference to ascertained workings of Nature; but since miracles were wrought according to the understanding of the masses, who are wholly ignorant of the workings of Nature, it is certain that the ancients took for a miracle whatever they could not explain by the method adopted by the unlearned in…
Benedictus de Spinoza, The Philosophy of Spinoza
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
A Miracle Is A Work That Causeth Admiration By Miracles are signified the Admirable works of God: & therefore they are also called Wonders. And because they are for the most part, done, for a signification of his commandement, in such occasions, as without them, men are apt to doubt, (following their private naturall reasoning,) what he hath commanded, and…
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
_I answer that,_ As is clear from what has been said above (Q. 110, A. 4), if we take a miracle in the strict sense, the demons cannot work miracles, nor can any creature, but God alone: since in the strict sense a miracle is something done outside the order of the entire created nature, under which order every power of a creature is contained. But sometimes miracle may be taken in a wide sense, for whatever exceeds…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Though the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed, be, in this case, Almighty, it does not, upon that account, become a whit more probable; since it is impossible for us to know the attributes or actions of such a Being, otherwise than from the experience which we have of his productions, in the usual course of nature. This still reduces us to past observation, and obliges us to compare the instances of the violation…
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
For in their opinion one of the conditions of a miracle is that it should be quite different from any act which may have become habitual. But the Quran is of this sort, because it is only word, though it excels all created words.
Averroës, The Philosophy and Theology of Averroes
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Miracle
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
- Mircea Eliade
- Thomas Aquinas
- Charles Babbage
- Charles Hartshorne
- Apollonius of Tyana
- David Hume
- The Age of Reason
- Boetius of Dacia
- Ibn al-Rawandi
- Moses of Narbonne
- Keith Yandell
- R. F. Holland
Related ideas
- Simon & Schuster
- Arjuna
- Avatar
- Eusebius
- Evangelicalism
- History
- Jesus
- God in Christianity
- Gospel of Matthew
- Gospel of John
- Philosophy
- Hasidic Judaism
- Al-Ghazali
- Jesus Seminar
- Friedrich Schleiermacher
- Muhammad
- Maimonides
- Moses
- American Revolution
- Natural language
- New Testament
- Thomas Aquinas
- Nature
- Norman Geisler
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.