Miracles (AQA A-Level Religious Studies): Revision Notes

David Hume and Maurice Wiles on Miracles

Introduction

This topic examines two contrasting philosophical approaches to miracles. David Hume (1711-76) provided the most influential critique of miracles from an empiricist perspective, whilst Maurice Wiles (1923-2005) offered a theological response that reinterprets the concept of miracles within Christian belief. Understanding both perspectives is essential for evaluating the rationality of belief in miracles.

Hume's critique of miracles

Background: David Hume

David Hume was a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. His approach to miracles reflects his broader philosophical commitments:

• Empiricist: Believed all valid knowledge derives from sense experience
• Historian: Applied rigorous scrutiny to historical documents and witness testimony
• Religious critic: Regarded religious beliefs as contrary to reason and evidence

Hume's work on miracles appears in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. His historical training influenced his philosophical approach, as he consistently tested the reliability of sources and weighed the probability of reported events.

Knowledge is based on experience

Hume's fundamental principle is captured in his statement:

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

This empiricist approach means:

• Knowledge comes from sense experience
• The more evidence we have for an event, the higher its probability
• We should assess claims based on the weight of evidence supporting them
• This principle applies to science and should equally apply to miracle claims

Hume's definition and understanding of miracle

Hume defines a miracle as:

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.

Key aspects of this definition:

• Violation of natural law: People only call events miracles when they contradict normal expectations. If something happens regularly, it cannot be a miracle.
• Laws based on experience: Natural laws are established through consistent, uniform experience. The more evidence we have, the more certain we become about these laws.
• Everything is probability: For Hume, knowledge is a matter of probability, not absolute certainty.

Hume's formal definition:

A miracle may be accurately defined, a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.

This definition includes three elements:

1. Transgression of natural law: The event must violate how nature normally operates. Psychological experiences, though marvellous, cannot be miraculous.
2. Particular volition of the Deity: The miracle must be willed by God, who alone has power to bring about such events.
3. Interposition of invisible agent: Alternatively, miracles might be performed by spiritual powers other than God (e.g. heavenly Buddhas in Buddhism).

Hume's main inductive argument against miracles

Hume presents a logical four-step argument:

Step 1: Witness reliability and improbability

• Witness testimony must become more reliable in direct proportion to the improbability of what is claimed
• The more improbable the claim, the more reliable the witness needs to be to convince us

Step 2: Maximum improbability of miracles

• A violation of natural laws is the most improbable event possible
• This is because natural laws are based on firm and unalterable experience
• All that accumulated experience contradicts any report of a miracle

Step 3: Miracles are maximally improbable by definition

• If an event were not maximally improbable, it could not be called a miracle
• The very definition of miracle makes it the least likely of all possible events

Step 4: Probability favours lying or mistake

• The probability that witnesses are lying or mistaken is always greater than the probability that a miracle has occurred
• This follows from the fact that miracles are, by definition, maximally improbable events

Hume's conclusion:

Therefore we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any system of religion.

Hume's supporting arguments from psychology

Beyond his main logical argument, Hume provides psychological reasons to doubt miracle claims:

Lack of proper attestation

• Looking through history, we cannot find even one miracle properly attested by people of sufficient good sense, integrity, education and learning
• Available miracle accounts do not convince us that witnesses were reliable

Human credulity

• Humans are naturally credulous (too ready to believe)
• The feeling of surprise and wonder arising from miracles makes even sensible people less rational
• When religious spirit combines with love of surprise, common sense disappears
• Religious believers may knowingly tell false miracle stories because they believe their cause is holy
• A spiral develops: the more believers magnify stories, the more hearers believe them, leading to further magnification

Ignorant and barbarous sources

• Most miracle accounts come from ignorant and barbarous nations
• When found in civilised countries, they originate from ignorant and barbarous ancestors

Conflicting miracle claims

• Different religions claim their own miracles
• Each religion attributes miracles to their own God, karma, gods or Buddhas
• Each claim cancels out others
• Arguments against miracles of other faiths are actually arguments against your own

Hume's cynical conclusion:

In The Natural History of Religion, Hume sarcastically suggests that Christian religion cannot be believed by any reasonable person without a miracle - meaning that the real miracle is that anyone believes in miracles at all, given the contrary evidence.

Evaluation: How effective are Hume's ideas for religious belief?

1. Hume's argument is inductive, not a knock-down proof

• Inductive arguments deal in probabilities, not certainties
• Science cannot say something can never happen, only that it is highly improbable
• Scientific laws are descriptive (summarising what we have observed), not prescriptive (dictating what must happen)
• Laws of nature summarise what has been found to happen, but cannot rule out what might happen
• Therefore, we cannot say miracles do not happen, however improbable they might be

2. The main argument may not be as strong as it appears

A Christian believer could construct an identical argument structure with different conclusions:

Hume's argument	Christian believer's argument
P1: A miracle is a violation of natural law	P1: A miracle is a violation of natural law
P2: Violations must be observed	P2: Violations must be observed
P3: There are no reliable observations	P3: There are reliable observations
P4: Miracles are least probable events	P4: Miracles are least probable events
P5: Improbability defeats the claim	P5: Improbability is necessary for miracles
C: Miracles probably don't happen	C: Miracles probably do happen

The structures are identical, but different views on reliable observations (P3) and the significance of improbability (P5) lead to opposite conclusions. It is not clear who is correct.

3. Psychological arguments have weaknesses

Hume claims there are no properly attested miracles by people of sufficient good sense, integrity, education and learning. However, he contradicts himself when discussing the Roman historian Tacitus (54-117 CE), who reported miracles by Emperor Vespasian. Hume describes Tacitus as:

Noted for candour and veracity, and withal, the greatest and most penetrating genius, perhaps, of all antiquity; and so free from any tendency to credulity.

4. What would Hume say if he witnessed a miracle?

Critics ask: Would Hume's arguments force him to doubt his own senses if he witnessed a seemingly miraculous event? His arguments leave no room for accepting any miraculous event, suggesting he would have to doubt his own experience.

5. Hume sets the standard for discussion

Despite weaknesses, Hume's critique has become the starting point for all subsequent philosophical and theological discussion of miracles. His definition and arguments cannot be ignored, even when rejected.

Hume is surely correct when he concludes:

The Christian religion is founded on faith, not on reason.

This makes religion potentially ill-equipped to deal with reasoned challenges. Biblical miracle stories contain contradictions, errors, questionable moral judgements and highly improbable accounts. Faith may overcome these problems, but reason suggests Hume's overall judgements about miracles are closer to the truth.

Wiles' critique of miracles

Background: Maurice Wiles

Maurice Wiles (1923-2005) was a liberal Christian theologian who held prestigious academic positions:

• Professor of Christian Doctrine at King's College London (late 1960s)
• Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University (1970-91)

Wiles' theological approach:

• Followed the liberal tradition in theology
• Examined Christian doctrine in light of human reason
• Sought to re-present doctrine in ways accessible to modern thinkers
• Unlike philosophers who comment from outside, Wiles understood Christian doctrine from within
• His views are sympathetic to Christian experience whilst maintaining intellectual rigour

Wiles' main arguments

1. God does not act in the world through miracles

In Faith and the Mystery of God, Wiles approves of Tillich's view that miracles are sign events. He comments:

It is especially important to emphasise the symbolic character of these symbols, because they often are understood literally, with the result that the whole relation of God and the world becomes a nest of absurdities.

2. The problem with viewing God as intervening

In the past, God has been seen as:

• Interfering with laws of cause and effect to perform miracles
• Guiding human history along the best available path

For Wiles, such ideas can no longer be upheld in modern theology.

3. Divine intervention would make God seem immoral

If God did act through miracles, the concept becomes:

Not merely implausible and superfluous from the standpoint of human explanation, but religiously unsatisfactory in view of their apparently occasional and highly selective character.

The problem of selective intervention:

If God sometimes acts miraculously, why not always? In God's Action in the World, Wiles argues:

If the direct action of God, independent of secondary causation, is an intelligible concept, then it would appear to have been sparingly and strangely used. It would seem strange that no miraculous intervention prevented Auschwitz or Hiroshima, while the purposes apparently forwarded by some of the miracles acclaimed in traditional Christian faith seem trivial by comparison.

4. Selective intervention makes the problem of evil unsolvable

Wiles refers to Brian Hebblethwaite's argument:

If God occasionally intervenes directly, this raises the question: why does God not intervene more often? It would also prevent believers from appealing to:

• The God-given structures of creation
• The necessary role of natural laws in setting creatures at a distance from their creator
• The stable environment needed for creaturely life

These factors help explain physical evils that affect God's creatures. But if God sometimes intervenes, this explanation collapses.

5. An anti-realist view: miracles relate to our fight against evil

Wiles shifts the focus from Hume's question (Can an event be explained naturally?) to a different question (What does an event reveal about God's intentions?).

Wiles' view of New Testament miracles:

For the critical reader today the miracle tradition is highly problematic. There can be little doubt that for the tradition to have arisen at all, Jesus must have been a remarkable exorcist and healer. Beyond that it is hard to speak with any confidence of the history that lies behind the tradition. But our concern is not simply with what happened, but with its meaning for those who developed and passed on the tradition. The healing ministry of Jesus is firmly set within the context of a conflict with evil.

Key points:

• Jesus engaged in actions to oppose evil
• Mark's Gospel presents healing miracles as part of a campaign against evil
• Luke's Gospel sees them as signs of the coming kingdom and binding Satan's power
• Jesus' temptation in the desert is crucial: he expressly rejected performing miracles as signs to persuade people
• Such miracles would be mere showmanship without true religious context
• Jesus refused Satan's trap of using miracles as evidence of divine power
• There is no deus ex machina (a god from a machine) summoned to put things right

6. Only one miracle: creation itself

Rather than seeing miracles in the world, we should recognise that the creation of the world itself is the one-and-only miracle. It is the extraordinary act by which God brings into existence the whole ongoing drama of the universe.

7. Wiles' position suggests deism rather than theism

The distinction:

• Deism: God is an external creator who established physical laws, then stands back and allows the natural order to run its course
• Theism: God is constantly involved with everything in creation

This distinction has important implications for the problem of evil:

• For deists, God creates the world but doesn't intervene
• For theists, an active God could be expected to intervene to prevent evil
• Wiles' approach suggests theodicies (explanations for why God permits evil) remain important, but we cannot expect divine intervention

Comparison of Hume and Wiles

Hume and Wiles could not be more different in their assumptions and approaches.

1. Fundamental worldview differences

Hume: Atheist

• Assumes there is no God who is able to violate natural laws
• Views religious belief as fundamentally irrational

Wiles: Christian

• Assumes there is a God who chooses not to intervene through miracles
• Seeks to understand Christian belief in intellectually coherent ways

2. View of Christianity and miracles

Hume:

• Assumes Christianity is irrational, particularly regarding miracles
• Starts with the assumption that believers are required to believe in miracles
• His argument that miracles are the least likely events shows religious belief is fundamentally irrational

Wiles:

• Starts from within Christian belief
• Suggests ways to understand God that don't require selective intervention
• Hume's interventionist account is completely irrelevant to Wiles' understanding of God

3. Realist vs anti-realist approach

Hume: Realist

• Assumes accounts of miracles in the Bible and elsewhere are literal descriptions of (false) facts
• Focuses on evidence for whether an event can be explained in natural terms
• Unless a miracle is an unexpected, unexplained event that appears to violate natural law, there is little point calling it a miracle

Wiles: Anti-realist

• Uses biblical criticism to show much of the text is not literal or scientific, but symbolic and mythological
• Shifts the argument from evidence for events to what events reveal about God's intentions
• What counts as a miracle is a matter of personal interpretation - it is a symbol, not simply physical fact
• This approach has advantages: Wiles doesn't have to engage with Hume's type of argument, because there are no divine actions violating natural laws to explain

4. Impact on theological discussion

Wiles' approach:

• Effectively abandons Hume's idea of miracle as violation of natural laws
• Favours a more holistic view of God's activity
• God's activity takes the form of:
  • Establishing fundamental principles by which the world operates
  • Inspiring people to strive to overcome evil and suffering

Does Wiles answer Hume?

Wiles does not really answer Hume's challenge but sidesteps it by redefining the spheres of God's activity from something very specific (violations of natural law) to something more general (symbolic meaning and inspiration).

Remember!