Are Miracles Possible?

Miracles are possible if the personal Creator exists, and excluding His action before evaluating testimony simply assumes naturalism.

Summary

Yes. If God created the universe from nothing and sustains it, He can act within it beyond the productive power of ordinary causes. Natural laws describe what created things regularly do under stated conditions; they do not decree what the Creator may do. Hume's famous objection gives prior probability to uninterrupted nature by excluding God before hearing the evidence. The rational method weighs a particular claim's witnesses, context, alternatives, and theological meaning—especially for Jesus' Resurrection.

Natural Law Does Not Lock Out Nature's Lord

Possibility comes before identification. Once miracles are recognized as possible, each alleged event still needs evidence.

A Miracle Need Not Violate Natural Law

If a person catches a falling apple, gravity was not falsified; another cause entered the situation. Likewise, when God acts, natural causes retain their regular powers, but they are not the only cause present. No law of physics includes the premise “and no nonphysical agent may act.”

The closed-system premise belongs to philosophical naturalism, not measurement.

Hume's Circle Cannot Decide The Case

One popular argument says uniform experience establishes that miracles never occur, so any miracle report is less likely than error. But the reported events are part of the human experience under review. Excluding them to create “uniform” experience assumes the conclusion.

Rare events properly require stronger evidence. They do not require impossible evidence. Courts and historians often establish unique events through converging testimony and traces.

Meaning Helps Identify Divine Action

An unexplained recovery alone may justify “medically unexplained,” not immediately “God publicly authenticated this messenger.” Biblical signs occur in revelatory context. Jesus announced God's kingdom, claimed authority, predicted His death and Resurrection, and then rose.

The hypothesis “God raised Jesus” has personal agency and explanatory purpose. The hypothesis “a corpse naturally revived after execution” is not the Christian claim.

Support
  • Miracles and Prayer: places extraordinary action within ordinary providence.
  • Did Jesus Really Rise?: applies historical testing to Christianity's central miracle.
  • : begins with the greatest exercise of divine causal power—creation itself.
  • : presents a public sign in direct contest with false worship.
  • : joins visible healing to Jesus' invisible authority to forgive.
  • : treats Resurrection as public history rather than private mysticism.
Questions
Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

They require evidence proportionate to the claim and alternatives. “Extraordinary evidence” is useful if it means strong, converging evidence; it becomes circular if it means no testimony could ever count. The Resurrection case includes early sources, multiple witnesses, empty tomb, transformed skeptics, and failure of rival explanations.

Could An Unknown Natural Law Explain Every Miracle?

That possibility must be attached to an actual mechanism, not used as an unlimited escape hatch. An unknown natural process that raises a crucified man on command, in fulfillment of His message, would itself need remarkable evidence. Personal agency better explains timing, selection, and meaning than a hypothetical blind process invented only to avoid God.

What About Miracle Reports In Other Religions?

Investigate rather than dismiss. A reported event may be mistaken, fraudulent, providential, demonic, or genuinely extraordinary without validating every doctrine around it. Scripture tests signs by fidelity to the true God and gospel. Christianity rests on a uniquely early, public, redemptively interpreted Resurrection, not on the bare existence of wonders.

Sources