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  • A Response to My Critics
  • Robert Larmer (bio)

Miracles and Science: More (but Not Less!) Than a Miraculous Relationship: A Reply to Yiftach Fehige

In "Miracles, Divine Agency, and the Laws of Nature" I defended what I termed a "supernaturalist" understanding of the concept of miracle. Such an understanding, in contrast to deistic and occasionalist views, sees miracles as dramatic revelatory events produced by supernatural interventions that override what secondary created causes would otherwise produce. In defending this understanding of miracle, I argued first that the biblical data, when read in a hermeneutically responsible way, supports supernaturalism rather than occasionalism or deism, and that such an understanding of miracles is in no way at odds with the findings of science. [End Page 164]

In his response, Yiftach Fehige chooses not to engage with my argument that the biblical data support supernaturalism, but rather criticizes me on the basis that:

  1. 1. my claim that a supernaturalist account of miracle does not imply that the laws of nature are in any way violated does not contribute anything of value "to existing vindications of a supernaturalist model of miracles," and

  2. 2. my defence of a supernaturalist understanding of miracle does not support my "claim about the compatibility of Christianity and science."

Regarding the first point, Fehige does not give serious attention to the fact that it is far from clear that the concept of a law of nature being violated or suspended is logically coherent. Simply asserting that God is the originator and sustainer of all laws of nature does not in itself settle the question of whether it is logically possible to think of them as having exceptions. If, as many philosophers have argued, the laws of nature must be conceived as exceptionless, then the fact that God is their originator and sustainer no more implies that he can violate them than the fact that he is the originator and sustainer of bachelors implies that he can create a married bachelor. It is true that some philosophers, notably Richard Swinburne, have attempted to defend the concept of a violation of a natural law by suggesting that miracles constitute non-repeatable counter-instances to such laws. They have been strongly criticized, however, on the basis that a non-repeatable counter-instance would be sufficient to falsify a presumed law of nature, and that insofar as miracles are the sole instances of non-repeatable exceptions to the laws of nature, "it might appear that the category has been invented just for them, in which case the quasi-scientific underpinning of miracles by calling them nonrepeatable counterinstances of scientific laws looks somewhat suspect."2

It is clear that there are, to say the least, difficulties surrounding the concept of a violation of a law of nature. It is also clear that advocates of a supernaturalist model of miracle are routinely viewed as logically committed to defining miracles as violating the laws of nature. This seems to suggest that, on a supernaturalist model, belief in miracles at best commits one to pitting the evidence for miracles against the evidence for the laws of nature, and at worst commits one to trying to believe in exceptions to exceptionless regularities. It is evident, therefore, that if, as I spend the latter part of my paper arguing, it can be shown that a supernaturalist model of miracle is not committed to viewing miracles as violations of the laws of nature, this would, contra Fehige, "add philosophically to existing vindications of a supernaturalist model of miracle."

Fehige's second criticism is that my defence of a supernaturalist understanding of miracle does not support my "claim about the compatibility of Christianity and science." In raising this criticism, he may be taking me to have been addressing a broader issue than what I actually discussed in the paper. I had two goals in the paper, the first being to argue that the biblical [End Page 165] authors presuppose a supernaturalistic account of miracle, the second being to argue that a supernaturalistic understanding of miracle does not commit one to the claim that belief in miracles is unscientific in the sense of requiring one to believe that the laws of nature are violated...

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