Miracles - a presentation June 2022

Abstract

In providing a catalogue of modern miracles has Craig Keener provided the material needed by which we could not only come to the conclusion that miracles do exist, but arrive at the even stronger position that it is irrational to not believe in miracles? If so, what are the implications of such a conclusion?

Craig Keener

In his 2011 book Miracles and more recently in his 2021 book Miracles Today Craig Keener, Professor of New Testament in Asbury Theological Seminary and current president of the Evangelical Theological Society, gives details of over one hundred modern miracles, and notes that recent research indicates over 200 million Christians believe they have witnessed or experienced a miracle (2011:237-238). Furthermore his most recent book Miracles Today reports that research in Nepal indicates that 80% of the Christians in that country, which had no indigenous church 70 years ago but has over 200,000 believers now, have become Christians because they have either witnessed or experienced a miracle^[1]. For Keener this represents evidence for miracles that cannot be ignored. The following are six examples of the types of miracles that he records in his original 2011 book Miracles (2011:752-756)

1. Professor Keener prayed for a woman whose cyst was instantly healed and failed kidneys were healed
2. A friend and colleague Professor Adewuya witnessed his baby son restored to life through prayer after 20 minutes with no vital signs. The midwife certified that the baby was dead the entire time. (His son has now completed a masters degree)
3. A friend with whom Professor Keener has worked, Elaine Panelo was pronounced dead from liver cancer. However she was raised to life two hours later and simultaneously healed, immediately and permanently, of liver cancer. This can be confirmed by hospital staff.
4. A close and widely respected friend of Professor Keener witnessed a baby’s severe burns from the previous day suddenly disappear during prayer leaving no scar.
5. Stephen and Sheila Heneise, personal acquaintances, were permanently healed of congenital deafness and limp.
6. Jeanne Mabiala, a close friend of the family, witnessed a baby born dead and already white, fully restored during prayer and continues to be healthy - Jeanne Mabiala, with midwife experience and training recognised that the baby had been dead for some time.

The challenge that Keener presents to the academic community is what grounds have they got to reject the authenticity of these claims, and if they are not rejected then for each of these claims a supernatural explanation seems much more plausible than a non-supranatural explanation. As he sees it Hume, and others that reject the testimony of miracles, either employ circular reasoning, in which their premises involve such high levels of anti supernaturalism that the conclusion against the testimony for miracles is inevitable, or the arguments are ethnocentric, so that for example Hume’s claim that experience is universally against the existence of miracles is not really an argument against miracles, it is more a reflection of the poverty of his experiences of life, since the experience of the ‘majority world’ is quite different^[2].

In the preface of his 2021 book Keener records in detail an extraordinary miracle that was brought to his attention in 2015 because of the publicity surrounding his 2011 book on miracles. In this miracle Barbara Cummisky had had multiple sclerosis for 16 years and she had been so badly affected by this condition that she was only expected to survive another few weeks. She needed to breathe through a tracheotomy, her bladder and intestines did not work, she was almost blind and had not walked for years - in her own words, she was wrapped up like a pretzel. It was on Pentecost Sunday, June 7, 1981, whilst 2 friends from church were visiting her, that she ‘heard a booming, authoritative voice over her left shoulder (say) “My child: get up and walk”’. Which to the astonishment of all those involved she did. Her sight, her lungs, her feet, her legs, her hands, her intestines were all instantly healed and 40 years later she is still well and fully recovered. As can be imagined her many doctors declared that what had happened was medically impossible. Her story at the time became well publicised including in the Chicago Tribune, several TV stations, and many magazines. Having spoken to her doctors, Keener can confirm the accuracy of her story. It is this quality of evidence which makes Keener’s work so impressive and I believe sufficient to undermine scepticism about miracles.

Modern Responses to the argument from Miracles

To assess the philosophical significance of Keener’s work I looked at the bibliography section of the recently updated entry on Miracles in the ‘Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy’ to see what books and articles had been produced over the last 25 years on this subject. For example Bassinger in his 2018 undergraduate textbook Cambridge Elements Miracles gives a good basic working definition of a miracle:

‘A miracle is being defined as an unusual, unexpected, observable event due in part to the intentional direct interventive activity of God’ (2018:17)

The advantage of this definition is that it avoids the pitfalls of tying miracles to violations of natural laws, with the tendency for such definitions to become circular arguments based on anti supernatural premises. Bassinger does recognise there may exist other supernatural events that are not authored by God and I will deal with this later.

However the book that has caused the most controversy in recent years is Earman's Hume’s Abject Failure published in 2000. As the title implies this book takes Hume to task on a number of issues. Firstly, like Keener, Earman accuses Hume of circularity in a number of the points he makes. Ultimately he believes the only credible argument that can be salvaged from Hume is an evidential argument and Earman believes that using Bayesian methods it is possible to prove the existence of miracles. Quoting Babbage from his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise where he takes up Hume’s evidential challenge Earman notes that Babbage makes the following claim:

‘If independent witnesses can be found, who speak truth more frequently than falsehood, it is always possible to assign a number of independent witnesses, the improbability of the falsehood of whose concurring testimonies shall be greater than that of the improbability of the miracle itself’ (NBT 202;212)

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Earman believes that this approach can also be employed when dealing with multiple witnesses to the occurrence of different events (2000: 56). The significance of both these types of testimonies, multiple witnesses to the same event and multiple witnesses to different events is that this is very much the type of evidence Keener has provided in both his 2011 and 2021 books.

Objections to Earman’s analysis come from a number of quarters. For example Millican in his 2013 paper Earman on Hume on Miracles, believes Earman has failed to understand that Hume saw claims for miracles as a ‘kind’ of testimony and therefore his argument was that this ‘kind’ of testimony could never command our assent. Therefore we should consider the probability of miracle testimonies being true as a kind regardless of an individual miracle testimony. If we adopt this approach then we may want to agree with Levine that the Baysian approach of Earman is superfluous, because for Hume, due to his version of empiricism, it is not possible to have an ‘impression’ of a supernatural event. (The Cambridge Companion to Miracles 2011:302-303). However Levine goes on to point out regarding the type of empiricism Hume advocates ‘there is no reason to accept his argument against the possibility of justified belief in miracles (because it ultimately rests on his theory of impressions and ideas - a theory that even staunch empiricists should reject as simplistic  (2002:165)). With respect to Levine’s observations on the quality of Hume’s theory of ideas, Flew’s observations on Hume’s copy principle are also quite pertinent. For Flew it was Hume’s unwillingness to accept any counter examples to his theory of ideas as being authentic that had the ‘effect of changing what started as a contingent generalisation into a portentous tautology’. Which Flew referred to as the ‘Conventionalist Sulk’ (1961:26). Levine also notes that had Hume been physically present with Moses and saw all the events that transpired at the parting of the Red Sea (assuming they happened the way Cecil B DeMille portrayed them) then he would be left in the absurd situation of denying a miracle was happening due to his empiricism when all of his very sense experiences would be shouting the opposite. So whilst Levine objects to Earman’s approach his conclusions on Hume’s empiricism means that Keener’s account of modern miracles is potentially very similar to Hume standing by Moses at the Red Sea. Levine’s scepticism about miracles, which we find in his 2011 article, reflects his doubts about historical miracles ever being able to achieve that level of certainty. However I see no reason why modern miracles could not achieve that required level.

Another interesting point which Millican makes is that the argument that we should not believe in miracles because of false positives is often framed in an unrealistic manner, where we lump all the obviously false claims for miracles together and state that as a consequence all claims for miracles are subject to that level of improbability. The example Millican gives is that of Foinaven, a 100-1 outsider winning the 1967 Grand National because all the main contenders fell at the 23rd fence. You could argue that cumulatively there is a 5% chance of a BBC reporter making a mistake and since the odds of Foinaven winning in the way that he did are vastly more improbable than a 1 in 20 chance of the BBC reporter making a mistake, then it is more reasonable to believe Foinaven did not win the Grand National than to believe the reporter has not made a mistake. As Millican points out this is absurd and the reason is that the probability of a false positive in this case should factor in the probability of that reporter getting each element of the report wrong and that is exceedingly unlikely. I found this example useful because it mirrors the examples given by Keener where the claim that the specific individual mentioned was mistaken on all aspects of their accounts is far more unlikely than the more general aggregate of false positives for all miracle claims.

Another issue recent writers refer to is the problem of independence. Ahmed in his 2015 article for Mind concluded that even ‘multiple reports  from non-collusive witnesses lack the sort of independence that could make trouble for Hume’ (2015:1013). He comes to this conclusion because he believes true independence requires that the witnesses are not colluding or subject to any other common influence except their perception of the miracle (2015:1020-21). In his example he has a group of witnesses all seeing a supposed miracle from the vantage point of their cells which are located like spokes on a bicycle with the miracle taking place in the middle. As a consequence of this arrangement none of the witnesses can collude with each other but they can all see the supposed miracle - which in this case was a person walking on water. Their reports would all be independent but they could also all be deceived by a common illusion. The problem with this case study is that the example given lacks the texture and significance we experience in Keener’s modern miracles. It is a bit like the story of Simon the magician in Acts 8. It is clear that Simon had convinced the Samaritans for some years that he was some great person because of his magic. However, as soon as the evangelist Philip arrives, preaching about Jesus and performing amazing miracles of healing, everyone in Samaria forgets Simon’s magic tricks (including Simon himself) and instead they begin to listen very carefully to what Philip is saying. This change in behaviour is a direct consequence of the quality and quantity of miracles Philip is performing. Interestingly Ahmed makes the point in his conclusion that even multiple witnesses who are not fully independent can give rise to a reasonable belief that a miracle has happened if the consequences of believing that miracle would in some way lead to their death (2015:1041). For many Christians around the world coming to faith as a consequence of believing they have seen or experienced a miracle can lead to death or severe discrimination. As a recent government report noted over 264 million Christians around the world suffer persecution and Christians face discrimination in two thirds of the countries in the world including Nepal, were as mentioned by Keener, it is estimated that 80% of Christians in that nation had become Christians because of miracles^[3]. This is not an academic debate for these people, for many Christians their faith comes at a huge cost and therefore their testimonies should not be lightly dismissed. Ultimately Ahmed concedes that a Bayesian case could be made for rational belief in miracles, but that it would need to be more sophisticated than Babbage and Earman suggest (2015:1041). I believe that the material Keener provides with regard to modern miracles should easily meet that requirement.

One final article to consider is Hajek’s 2008 Are Miracles Chimerical? Unlike other recent philosophers Hajek is happy to defend Hume’s apriori contention that belief in miracles can never be justified because there is as compelling a proof from experience as can possibly be imagined against a miracle (2008:88). However, as mentioned before, there is good reason to believe this argument from experience either reflects a poverty of experiences or involves circularity where anti supernaturalism is being asserted in the premises and unsurprisingly it produces an anti supernatural outcome. With regard to Hume’s a posteriori arguments, whilst Hajek is generally supportive of Hume, he concludes that Hume's claim that the probability of miracles should be vanishingly small because they are so disanalogous to anything we have experienced is unrealistic. Firstly, for those with prior religious experiences miracles would not be that disanalogous. Secondly, ‘if the strength-of-analogy is such a crucial determinant of a reasonable person’s probability function, then that person should also be a sceptic about spectacular scientific discoveries’ that are often very disanalogous to anything we have experienced - which is clearly an absurd conclusion (2008:103).

Having reviewed the recent work on miracles I notice that none of these articles or books refer to Keener’s work on modern miracles and therefore their examples when considered refer to much older miracles where testimonies are much harder to verify. I believe the accessibility, potential strength and ready supply of modern miracles, highlighted by Keener, should be able to overcome the relevant issues raised by the articles and books recently produced and therefore it is reasonable to assume that a robust case can be made for the rationality of believing in miracles. Indeed such is the quantity and quality of the miracles now available to the diligent researcher I think it should be possible to argue that there is sufficient material for defending the proposition that it is irrational to not believe in miracles. Returning to the situation with Philip the Evangelist in Acts 8. If you had been a keen observer of all his many miracles to what extent would it be rational for you to deny that miracles were taking place when you have personally witnessed so many powerful examples of instant healing. Especially as Philip would claim that this power to heal did not come from him but came from God. Likewise we could ask to what extent is it rational to set aside the quantity and quality of testimonies that Keener refers to when he lays out his case for modern miracles? It could be argued that our reluctance to ascribe the status of miracles to these claims may not be a product of our rationality but a product of a deep seated prejudice against the supernatural which has long cultural roots. For example the claim that  incredible and well documented cures, such as Barbara’s instantaneous recovery of the ability to walk and digest food, are not conclusive evidence for miracles, because there may exist alternative non-supernatural explanations, which at present we are unaware of, implies a metaphysical knowledge that no purely natural source of knowledge is capable of. For this claim to be valid we must believe we are capable of knowing that the supernatural is so implausible that it is more reasonable to believe some unknown natural cause was responsible for Barbara’s healing rather than coming to the conclusion that her healing was the result of supernatural causation. Yet the belief that the supernatural is ‘so implausible’ is ultimately a metaphysical claim and it is far from clear how one can justify such high levels of implausibility; especially as Keener’s account of modern miracles shows that Hume’s claim that uniform experience gives us the confidence to believe miracles have not taken place, is more a reflection of Hume’s poverty of experience than the universal experience of the human race.

My challenge is for philosophers to investigate Keener’s work and see if the following argument: that it is irrational to not believe in miracles - could be successfully defended. I trust the previous two sections have provided reasons why I think this is possible. The next section will supply reasons why such an investment in time and effort may be both profitable and much needed.

Implications

This final section now considers what the implications would be if we could construct a successful argument that it is irrational not to believe in miracles. The first consequence would involve the claim we live in a closed universe and therefore there is no supernatural causation. If it can be established that we live in a world where there are miracles, then such claims become impossible to maintain. This will have a number of implications for science, one of which will be to invalidate the use of methodological naturalism to undermine the intelligent design argument. Michael Behe in his 1996 book Darwin’s Black Box caused a stir in the scientific community with his challenge to those who believe in evolution to provide an answer to the problem of how could evolution generate the irreducible complexity we see in biology? He noted that by 1996 there had been no peer reviewed academic papers detailing how random mutations, time and natural selection could produce irreducible complexity (1996:176). Rather than producing the academic papers needed to refute Behe’s position instead the scientific community sought to silence the teaching of intelligent design in the courts. For example in the 2005 Dover case as well as the 1982 Arkansas case against Creation Science one of the major arguments against both these positions was that they involved supernatural causes which violated the perceived requirement that science should restrict itself to natural causes. However, as Behe points out, the most obvious solution to irreducible complexity is that it is the product of design; and a world which has miracles is also a world which can have intelligent design. Interestingly, shortly before he died, Anthony Flew, who traditional argued against the design argument, showed remarkable humility in admitting that he was wrong, stating the following:

‘It now seems to me that the findings of more than 50 years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design’^[4]

Unfortunately other attempts by philosophers to investigate these claims have not been that rigorous. In researching last years paper on animal suffering I noted that Southgate dismissed Behe’s scientific arguments in less than 1 page (2008:18), with his main argument being that until all evolutionary explanations have been found wanting intelligent design will always be considered an inferior explanation because of its recourse to supernatural causation. The same thinking can be seen in Draper’s analysis of Behe. Indeed Everitt in his book The Non-Existence of God claims that Draper had adequately rebuffed Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity (2003:108). However close reading of Draper’s article shows a much more nuanced position in which he commends Behe for producing a strong argument for design but like Southgate suggests that we have not reached the position where we have exhausted all possible evolutionary routes to arriving at irreducible complexity (2002:18). This line of argument is consistent with Behe’s observation, which he makes in his latest book, published in 2019, Darwin Devolves, that in the 20 years since he made his original challenge, whilst many have tried to discredit his work on irreducible complexity, rather than produce an account of how Darwinian evolution could generate irreducible complexity the usual line of argument is to demand that Behe demonstrate that a functioning mouse trap could not possibly arise gradually. Behe objects that this is a completely unsuitable standard since ‘science judges the success of a theory by the weight of empirical evidence rather than logic.. if there are good reasons to think Darwinian routes wouldn’t work and if after a diligent search no evidence is found that they do, then the theory has failed’ (2019:232)^[5]. I suggest such tenacious holding on to evolution, despite the overwhelming evidence for irreducible complexity, is in part driven by a belief that supernatural causation should be resisted at almost any cost. However, as noted before, in a world of miracles, the bar to accepting a supernatural explanation should be lowered, as it is no longer as unreasonable as it would seem in a world without miracles. For pragmatic reasons methodological naturalism should still be the preferred approach in science, but it should not be an absolute necessity when we have reason to believe that there has been supernatural intervention.

The second consequence of acknowledging that we live in a world of miracles can be seen if we take a closer look at some key biblical narratives. If we were with Moses and the Egyptian magicians as these magicians tried unsuccessfully to produce lice from dust of the earth, having previously copied the miracles of turning a stick into a snake, water into blood, and bringing frogs out of the river, would we agree that this latest miracle, the producing of lice from dust, was indeed ‘the finger of God’ (Exodus 8:19) This account shows a world with multiple sources of supernatural activity, a point made by Keener where he notes most world religions and animistic faiths describe their own miracles; however as this narrative explains, it was the quantity and quality of the miracles (and there will still another 7 to come) which meant that these miracles came from a God whose instructions should be listened to and obeyed. In this case the instruction was to let Israelites leave Egypt so that they could worship Him.

Another narrative comes from Luke's gospel where John the Baptist, who is now in prison, sends a messenger to Jesus to enquire if He was the coming Messiah (Luke 7:18-23). Would you agree with Jesus that having cured many of people of their infirmities, afflictions and blindness in front of all those present, that he had established His credentials as being the coming Messiah and in the process overturned the false beliefs of the John the Baptist, along with most of the Jewish people, that the Messiah had to be a military figure who would set the Jewish nation free from Roman occupation.

This use of miracles to combat false beliefs can be seen in the healing of the paralytic man lowered through the roof (Luke 5:17-26). It is clear that his friends wanted him to be healed which is why they had gone to the effort of lowering the man through the roof. However Jesus uses this miracle as a teaching opportunity, because He wants to establish that He is equal to God. Therefore instead of healing the man straightaway He pronounces forgiveness of the man's sin, something that the Jewish religious leaders knew only God could do. As He expected the scribes and Pharisees present were upset by this and considered His claim to forgive sins blasphemous. It was at this point that Jesus said

‘Which is easier, to say, “Your sins are forgiven you”, or to say “Rise up and walk?” But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins …. I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house’ (Luke 5:23-24)

In all these cases miracles were used to reinforce the authenticity of a message, whether it was that Moses was speaking on behalf of God when he asked Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, or Jesus emphasising His divinity and overturning false beliefs about the Messiah and the nature of who God was. This approach to miracles can be seen in John’s gospel where Jesus on a number of occasions reminds His hearers that they should listen to His words and believe what He says about Himself because of the miracles He has performed (John 5:19-20, 10:37-38 & 14:10-14). Most fearful of all is Jesus’s condemnation of Bethsaida, Chorazin and Capernaum for their failure to repent even though they had experienced many of His miracles (Matt 11:20-24). The inference being that these miracles should have led those cities to believe His teaching was from God and therefore His teaching should have been obeyed. Miracles are not for entertainment, some are for compassion, but they are also for confirming God’s revealed truth. It is this aspect of miracles which has the potential to have a very  powerful effect on our understanding of the world. For not only do miracles show that we do not live in a closed universe, but they have the capacity, where we have them in sufficient quantity and quality, to confirm that we have a revelation from God that He is willing to authenticate. I would suggest, based on Keener’s work on modern miracles, that we have the ingredients required to construct an argument that demonstrates that the Bible is a revelation from God which He has been willing to authenticate through a vast number of powerful miracles.

Again my challenge is for someone who has the time, ability and the necessary background knowledge, to take Keener’s work and from it build a robust argument that not only shows it is not only rational to believe in miracles, but that it is actually irrational not to believe in them. As I hope I have indicated, the consequences of such an argument being established are  very significant, with the potential to result in eternal benefits for those who have the humility to be prepared to change their mind on these issues.

Bibliography 

Ahmed, Arif, Hume and the Independent Witnesses (Mind 124:1013-1044, 2015)

Bassinger, David, Miracles (Cambridge University Press:2018)

Behe, Michael Darwin’s Black Box (The Free Press, 1996)

Behe, Michael Darwin Devolves (Harper One, 2019)

Dougherty, Trent The Problem of Animal Pain (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014)

Draper, Paul ‘Irreducible Complexity and Darwinian Gradualism:A Reply to Michael J. Behe, (Faith and Philosophy, vol 19, no. 1 January 2002)

Earman, John Hume’s Abject Failure (Oxford, 2000)

Everitt, Nicholas The Non-Existence of God (Routledge, 2003)

Fogelin, Robert, A Defense of Hume on Miracles (Princeton University Press, 2003)

Flew, A., Hume’s Philosophy of Belief (Routledge, 1961)

Hajek, Alan Are Miracles Chimerical? In Jonathan Kvanvig, ed., Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Volume 1), (Oxford University Press, pp 82-104:2008)

Hume, David, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford University Press, 1975)

Keener, Craig Miracles (Baker Academic, 2011)

Keener, Craig  Miracles Today (Baker Academic 2021)

Levine, Michael Review of John Earman, ‘Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles’ (Hume Studies, 28(1):161-167, 2002)

Millican, Peter, Earman on Hume on Miracles in Stewart Duncan and Antonia LoLordo (eds.), Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses (New York: Routledge, pp. 271-84, 2013)

Millican, Peter, Philosophers on Miracles, in Graham Twelftree (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Miracles (Cambridge University Press pp 291-308, 2011)

Southgate, Christopher The Groaning of Creation (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008)