Christian theology presupposes the supernatural. We believe that God created the world ex nihilo, that Christ was born of a virgin so that He could assume full human nature without its attendant sinfulness, that He performed many miracles during His ministry and that He rose from the dead in a miraculous defeat of sin and death. Miracles, rightly defined, are an indispensable element of the Christian faith.
A true miracle is defined as a “supernaturally caused singularity.” As stated by atheist Antony Flew, “a miracle is something which would never have happened had nature, as it were, been left to its own devices.” Miracles, as such, are not logically possible in the anti-supernaturalistic worldviews of pantheism and atheism, nor acceptable in the “absentee-God” system of deism, if in fact these systems are to remain internally consistent. Only theism can remain internally consistent and at the same time maintain the possibility of miracles. Thus, only religions that consistently affirm theism as a central tenet of their theology can even begin to claim the miraculous as a confirmation of their message.
To those who presuppose that miracles are not possible, much of the Bible is considered to be nothing more than fabricated myths that simply reflect the pre-scientific culture and time in which it was written. Obviously, the very miracle of divine inspiration itself is repudiated. These critics concede only a “neutered” Christianity, if any at all. The virgin birth is denied because virgins do not naturally become pregnant. The deliverance and healing miracles of Jesus are patronizingly scorned as products of the medical and scientific ignorance of first-century man. Christ’s resurrection is reinterpreted as the wishful thinking of His defeated group of followers. By presupposing the incredibility of miracles and thereby denying the actuality of the Biblical miracles, the anti-supernaturalist strips Christianity of its uniqueness. This tactic is employed by pluralist John Hick who denies the Incarnation of Christ in order to affirm his presupposed pluralism. According to his so-called “Copernican Revolution,” christocentric Christianity should be considered as nothing more than a satellite of the theocentric (noumenal) Reality about which all religions revolve. Christianity, he says, must capitulate to the “growing body of empirical evidence” that repudiates the miraculous that evangelicalism ignorantly affirms. Hick received much of his epistemology from Immanuel Kant, who found in David Hume’s thought an opportunity to revolutionize the world of philosophy.
Hume argued that since a miracle is a rare occurrence (by definition) and that true credibility is based upon the weightier proportion of evidence, miracles should then be discredited because one should believe to be true only those things that are demonstrably true in the normal course of things. Hume therefore does not deny the possibility of miracles, just that a wise man as a rule should always believe whatever the greater evidence points to. And since miracles by definition are proportionally deficient to the normal course, they should not be given any credibility.
A brief evaluation of Hume’s argument, however, reveals that it is not as convincing as it first seems. To begin with, Hume is arguing in a circle. He could only know that miracles are incredible if he knew that all reports of them were false. But he could only know that all such reports were false if he already knew that miracles had never occurred and the eyewitnesses were mistaken. Hume’s argument assumes, in effect, that the Resurrection is not credible simply because the substantial proportion of people who die are not bodily raised and presented before eyewitnesses. Using Hume’s logic, however, even if a resurrection could be empirically verified, one should not believe it because the vast majority of deaths do not result in a resurrection. It is truth by majority vote.
Consistent with Hume’s system, we should deny as incredible any notion that Mark McGuire ever hit seventy home runs in a season, eyewitnesses and statistical records notwithstanding. For out of the thousands of major league baseball players that have ever played the game, he is alone in this feat, making his accomplishment proportionally deficient and therefore incredible. If one who held to Hume’s view appealed to the eyewitnesses and written records that attest to McGuire’s feat as sure evidence, he would then beg the question as to why the eyewitnesses and written testimony of the gospels are not likewise admitted as evidence of Christ’s resurrection. Although Hume’s argument does not prima facie deny the possibility of miracles, it unjustifiably votes them out as too incredible for the thinking individual to embrace.
In reality, however, one must be able to prove the non-existence of the God of theism in order to prove the non-credibility of miracles. Only if a non-theistic worldview can be proven can miracles truly be considered impossible or incredible. An a priori commitment to the impossibility or incredibility of miracles is incompatible with the confessions of the historic Christian faith, which uncompromisingly affirms the Biblical miracles. Any system that attempts to make the two compatible will ultimately self-destruct. The reality of the miraculous is intimately wound into the Christian faith, a faith that cannot be sustained without the presence of the miracles it affirms. Far from purging the Bible of the miracles it records, the responsible exegete should affirm all that the Scriptures affirm and deny only that which the Scriptures deny. Miracles are recorded as fact and given as confirmation of both the messenger and the message (Heb. 2:4; 1 Kings 17:24). To deny the credibility of these “supernaturally caused singularities” is to evacuate the Christian faith of one of its primary sources of confirmation.
Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999).