God’s Action in the
World
1d: Miracles
Introduction
• Modern thinking about the Action of God
in the world must involve a dialogue
between theology and science.
• What we believe about God is the proper
concern of theology. If God is the Creator
and Sustainer of the world, it is
reasonable to look at what we know about
the world and to ask what, if anything, this
says about God.
Approaches to knowing
about God
• Christian theology has often distinguished
between Special and General Revelation.
• Special Revelation refers to what we can
know about God from Scripture in
particular.
• General Revelation refers to what we can
know about God from what he has
created.
Doctrine of God
• As a result of theological deliberations, thinkers arrived
at a doctrine of God. This represents, at any one time,
the best attempt using the language available to
describe what God is like and what He might do in
relation to the world in general and humanity in
particular.
• All attempts to speak of God are inevitably provisional
and subject to change. We have a ‘best available
model’ of God in our doctrinal formulations at any one
time.
A contribution from
science ?
• If theology makes assertions about God and his
relationship to everything, it could well be the
case that what we discover about the world that
God has supposedly made, can and should
inform our understanding about God.
• In particular we must ask the question: “How
does God relate to the world and does He act in
the world in any way other than to keep it in
being?”
A link between
science and theology
• Science involves the making of hypotheses, theories
and models of reality. These are tested and rejected,
retained and modified, in conformity with reality as it is.
• In theology, models of God should conform to the reality
of God. Models of God can be revised too. How we ‘test’
them is of course more difficult than it is in science.
• Both disciplines make models and both respect the
control of reality on them.
THEOLOGY
Model of God
Good fit?
Reality of God
IF WE BELIEVE THAT GOD CREATED
THE WORLD, THEN WE CAN ASK
ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN GOD AND THE WORLD.
SCIENCE
Model of the
world
Good fit?
Reality of the
world
Back to the
doctrine of God - 1
• Christian theology wants to affirm two things of God,
namely:
• God is transcendent
• God is immanent
• In other words there is an simultaneous affirmation of
God’s otherness and difference from His Creation
alongside an affirmation of His closeness to all that He
has made and keeps in being.
Back to the
doctrine of God - 2
• In theory, therefore, it is possible for
theologians to speak of an all-powerful God
who could run the universe and interact with
it in whatever way he chooses.
• In practice the key question is how does God
act, and in particular, does God ever do
anything which is different from the normal
regular behaviour of the universe that we
observe?
Key questions
• Is it the case that the universe always behaves in a
regular way?
• Are there any sufficiently well documented exceptions to
this apparently law like behaviour?
• If there are exceptions, do they have religious
significance? What do they tell us about God?
• Is it a problem for science if God occasionally
‘intervenes’?
Some theoretical models
of God and the world
God created the universe and sustains it
moment by moment.
The universe is observed to usually run in a
law-like manner. This is understood to be
God’s way of creating a stable environment in
which creatures can develop and live.
God may choose to work in unusual ways if
there are good reasons to do so.
THEISM
Some theoretical models
of God and the world
There is no God.
The universe is observed to
run in a law-like manner.
Miracles are impossible.
ATHEISM
Some theoretical models
of God and the world
God made the universe which He
chooses to leave to run according to
the laws of nature He put within it and
which we observe.
We should therefore not expect
anything ‘miraculous’
DEISM
Some theoretical models
of God and the world
The universe is in God but not to be
identified with God.
The universe is observed to run in a
law-like manner.
In theory God could choose to act in
unusual ways.
PANENTHEISM
Choosing between
worldviews
• A choice of this kind will not rest on one single
factor or issue. Most of us arrive at conclusions
in the light of many things, not least our own
personal journey.
• There will be theological considerations
independent of scientific questions.
• There will be concerns about which best fits
with what we understand science to be saying.
A key empirical issue
• Let us restrict the use of the term miracle to something
similar to that used in the classical discussion by David
Hume, namely: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of
nature.”
• Is it the case that there have been any instances of
such violations?
• If there have been this is presumably bad news for
Atheism and Deism.
• Is it necessarily a problem for science?
Are miracles a problem for
science?
• Some say yes and some say no!
• There are scientists who have very different worldviews.
• An atheist who is also a scientist has no place for
miracles. They are not expected.
• A theist who is a scientist can accommodate miracles,
indeed often expects them. ‘Laws of nature’ express
how God normally runs the show, but do not forbid God
from doing things differently.
Are miracles a problem for
theology?
• Some say yes, others no!
• Theologians who happily accept miracles still face
the question of why God chooses to do the
miracles He does and not others, which He could
presumably have done.
• This is a major reason why some theologians
would prefer God not to do specific miracles at all,
even to the point of denying the traditional
understanding of the incarnation and resurrection
of Jesus in the Christian tradition.
Historical Developments
•Isaac Newton was
not a Newtonian!
Newton’s physics rapidly led to a view of the universe as a
mechanism which could in principle be fully understood as
running according to the discovered Laws of Nature. Newton
himself believed that it was God who directly mediated the
force of gravity. Not only this, but God occasionally needed to
modify the system, intrude into human affairs using such
things as comets and epidemics and do miracles as well!
Historical Developments
•In succeeding years a view began to emerge which
effectively removed God from the everyday management
of His world. Newton’s belief in Divine Action began to be
replaced by a view that the universe, even if it was a
Creation of the Divine Being, was essentially
autonomous in its functioning. God became, to all
intents, the God of Deism. It would be a short step to
Naturalism - atheism in other words - where God no
longer had a role to play in our understanding of the day
to day operation of the world.
Historical Developments
Hume wrote that it was unreasonable to
believe in miracles.
Laplace reckoned that in principle the world
was completely determined by Newtonian
mechanics.
•Darwin’s work provided an account which
removed the need for divine design of
individual creatures.
God of the Gaps
•It would be easy to see this historical trend
as slowly removing God from the scene.
Scientific accounts rely on the sorts of
causal explanations that have no room for
talk about God. If God is seen as competing
for the same explanatory territory as
science, the success of the latter looks like it
squeezes God into the gaps - gaps in our
understanding that, once filled, make God
redundant.
God of the Gaps - 2
•As Chris Southgate has written, “It was seen
how difficult it was to sustain descriptions of
the physical world in which God acted as a
cause complementing physical causes filling the gap left by scientific narratives.”
•But ‘God-of-the-gaps’ thinking can lead to
bad theology. It removes God from the
picture to be replaced by the ‘presumption of
naturalism’.
Conceptualising the options
1. Atheism
God is banished.
2. Deism
God is before - the First Cause only.
3. Different
levels of cause
God is behind - operating at another level
‘behind’ the observed system of causation.
4. God and an
‘open’ system
God is acting through the system in gaps left in
quantum systems and chaotic systems.
5. God is not
limited
God can and maybe does act at many levels:
before, behind and through the system, but can
also change the normal way the system
operates.
The question of miracles
•There are a number of reasons why the term
miracle should not be restricted to David Hume’s
well known definition:
•‘Miracles are violations of the laws of nature’
•In Biblical language what we translate as miracle
has a wider sense which could include, in our
modern jargon, ‘violations of laws of nature’ but can
also refer to events which do not violate anything
but which are unusual events pointing to the work of
God.
Hume’s argument - 1
•The essence of Hume’s argument as to why we should
remain incredulous of claims to the miraculous reduces to
this:
•[a] We have uniform experience that the laws of nature are
not violated.
This rather begs the question - what if there are exceptions?
•[b] ‘no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless
the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be
more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to
establish.’
Does he simply refuse to believe any report with evidence of
miracles?
Hume’s argument -2
•C.S. Lewis is worth quoting here:
•“Now we must of course agree with Hume that if there is
absolutely ‘uniform experience’ against miracles, if in other
words they have never happened, why then they never
have. Unfortunately we know the experience against them
to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them
are false. And we can know all the reports to be false only
if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In
fact we are arguing in a circle.” (Miracles, 1947, 123)
Hume’s false premise
•Science has moved on since Hume’s day and few today
accept that our current understanding of the laws of nature
is unchangeable. Moreover, even a strongly determined
natural order does not necessarily allow for totally
comprehensive scientific explanations. In the light of what
we know of unpredictability at the quantum level and
unpredictability in non-linear dynamic systems, it seems
even more unlikely that we can speak with any confidence
of ‘violations of laws of nature’.
A theological
definition of miracles
•Southgate offers the following as a possible
definition of miracle:
•“an extremely unusual event, unfamiliar in
terms of naturalistic explanation, which a
worshipping community takes to be specially
revelatory, by dint of the blessing it conveys,
of the divine grace.”
Introducing John Polkinghorne
and Arthur Peacocke
•
Dr. Polkinghorne is the former Professor of Mathematical
Physics at Cambridge University. He then became an
Anglican minister. He has written widely on science and
religion and received the 2002 Templeton Prize.
Dr. Peacocke began his life as an academic scientist at
Birmingham University. He later served as Dean at Clare
College, Cambridge. Like John Polkinghorne he is an
ordained Anglican minister and well know writer. He was
also awarded the Templeton Prize in 2001.
Polkinghorne and
Peacocke on Miracles
These are two of the ‘Big Names’ in
the field of science and religion.
John Polkinghorne has a more
positive view as to the possibility of
miracles.
•Arthur Peacocke tends to be far
more cautious about whether
miracles happen.
The Resurrection and
Virgin Birth of Jesus
• Note that the term Virgin Birth is probably less helpful than
the more informative term ‘virginal conception’.
• Historically these are two pivotal miracles in the Christian
understanding of who Jesus is. The creeds affirm that
Jesus was born of a virgin mother having been ‘conceived
by the Holy Spirit’ and that he was raised from the dead
three days after being crucified.
• Polkinghorne and Peacocke have somewhat different
understandings of these doctrines.
Polkinghorne defends an
essentially traditional
view: ‘the dual origin of
the X and Y
chromosomes ... seems
a possible physical
expression of the belief,
in the words of the
Nicene Creed, that Jesus
“by the power of the Holy
Spirit became incarnate
of the Virgin Mary and
was made man”.’
Polkinghorne
on
Virginal
Conception
Peacocke really does
not wish to accept the
virginal conception of
Jesus. For him, the
notion of God
supplying the Y
chromosomes is
strange. He wishes to
separate stories of
virginal conception
from the doctrine of the
incarnation.
Peacocke on
Virginal
Conception
Polkinghorne’s view is
more traditional than
Peacocke’s. He
writes, “The empty
tomb is of great
importance with its
proclamation that the
risen Lord’s glorified
body is the
transmutation of his
dead body.”
Polkinghorne
on
Resurrection
Peacocke is reluctant to
accept either that the tomb
was empty or that the
resurrected Jesus needed
the atoms of his previous
body. He is not convinced
of the theological need for
an empty tomb. It is our
‘bodily pattern’ that is
important, not the bits we
are made of. Jesus’
resurrection body was of a
different order transmuted in God.
Peacocke
on
Resurrection
A footnote on Peacocke: is he saying God
cannot or does not do miracles?
•Consider these extracts from Peacocke’s Theology for a
Scientific Age (1993, p183):
•“...we cannot rule out the possibility that God might ‘intervene’...
to bring about events for which there can never be a naturalistic
explanation ... such direct ‘intervention’ is (not) normally
compatible with and coherent with other well-founded
affirmations concerning the nature of God and of God’s relation
to the world. The historical evidence that such an intervention
has happened will therefore have to be especially strong and the
event in question of a kind that renders it uniquely revelatory in
its particular context of God’s purposes ... there are in the end
very few events that pass through this seive.”
More on Polkinghorne and
Peacocke
•You can find out more about these two key
thinkers on the Counterbalance website
which has biographical information about
both and video clips where they talk about
their beliefs about various issues in science
and religion.
•
http://www.counterbalance.net