Abstract:
Classical theism holds that God rules the world not only indirectly, by the natural laws established with creation, but through actions or direct interventions that interfere with natural processes and human actions. These direct interventions are usually called miracles. Modern Western philosophy, at least starting from Spinoza and Hume, has defined miracles as “violations of the laws of nature” and criticized them on this ground. Actually, if God is the author of the natural laws, it seems contradictory that he violates them performing miracles. In the last decades, analytical philosophy of religion developed a considerable discussion on this topic. This debate has seen, on the one hand, those, like N. Smart and R. Swinburne, who defend the definition of miracle as a violation of natural laws, and those, like K. Ward, R. Larmer, and D. Corner, who reject it and sustain alternative definitions of miracle. In my article, I refer to this debate with the purpose of showing that the notion of miracle as a violation of the natural law is a coherent one from a theistic point of view.
Machine summary:
Modern Western philosophy, at least starting from Spinoza and Hume, has defined miracles as "violations of the laws of nature" and criticized them on this ground.
Modern Western philosophy has often defined miracles as "violations" or "transgressions" of the laws of nature by God or other 1.
2. In his book The Concept of Miracle (1970) Richard Swinburne has defined a miracle as "a violation of a law of nature by a god" (Swinburne 1970, 11) and defended this definition from a theistic point of view.
In his book The Philosophy of Miracles (2007), David Corner claims that when we are facing a non-repeatable counter-instance to the laws of nature, it is not necessary to speak of a violation of the laws of nature; actually, we can always understand any law as a statistical generalization which is not necessarily true but only useful in order to expand our knowledge of nature.
In this way, he defends the concept of miracle as "an objective event that is specially caused by God" (Larmer 1996, 40) occurring in complete accordance with the laws of nature.
Following this general view on miracles, some authors point out that the definition of a miracle as a violation of law of nature does not have a ground in the Bible or in other holy Scriptures (including the Qur’ān), where miracles are rather seen as "signs"; that is, as events having a religious meaning for believers.
L. Craig, who consider the notion of violation of the natural law as inconsistent, propose different definitions for miracle.