Knowing Christ Today by Willard Dallas

Author:Willard Dallas [Dallas, Willard]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-02T20:00:00+00:00

H U M E A N D L E W I S O N M I R AC L E S

Taking David Hume’s famous and inf

luential definition of

“miracle” as a violation of natural law or the interruption of one K n o w i n g Chr i st To day

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of nature’s regularities, C. S. Lewis pointed out that, in Hume’s own views, the only reason to believe that there are natural laws or that nature is “uniform” is the existence of a rational creator who sees to it that nature is uniform. If nature is uniform then, in this view, it is so on the same basis as miracles might occur, namely, the purposes of the creator.

Independently of Hume, however, we can now say, on the basis of our inquiries here, that there is something other than nature that accounts for nature and the regularities of nature. The laws of nature are “his” or “its” arrangements. And if they are, then he or it can change the conditions and manners of those arrangements to allow for or to bring about events that are totally out of character for nature “on its own.” Nature is, simply, not on its own. But then both the laws of nature and the change of their higher-level conditions—along with any resultant miraculous event and its “natural” consequences—are a part of a larger system of reality including both nature and the special purposes of God.7

All of this being so, no one can with good reason reject the miraculous central teachings of Christian tradition and life on the grounds that it is impossible for such events to occur among human beings. To repeat the basic points, physical reality is not a causally “closed” system. Its very coming into existence, with or without God, is by itself sufficient to show that it is not a closed system, and that the often alleged “causal closure of the physical”

is just false. Since it is false, the possibility of genuinely miraculous interventions into human life is secured. And if it is possible that the entire physical world “came from nothing,” surely miraculous events could do the same.

P O S S I B L E , B U T A R E M I R AC L E S E V ER AC T UA L ?

But even so, whether any miracles actually have occurred and whether given events that did occur were miracles are additional 128

Dallas Willard

issues. And they are ones we need to be very careful about. Claims to involvement with miraculous events, even when hardly plausible, do give people great power and inf luence in human affairs. Often great harm is done by them. That is why established religious bodies, such as the Catholic church, often have elaborate procedures for testing events presented as miracles to see if they really are. Deists and their liberal counterparts were right to be concerned about the effects of claims to God’s interventions, though they were wrong in the way they tried to respond to the problem.

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