Miracles

Author(s): R. G. Swinburne
Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 73 (Oct., 1968), pp. 320-328
Published by: Blackwell Publishing for The Philosophical Quarterly
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320

MIRACLES1
BY R. G. SWINBURNE

In this article I wish to investigate whether there could be strong historical

evidence for the occurrence of miracles, and contrary to much writing which
has derived from Hume's celebrated chapter " Of Miracles ", I shall argue
that there could be. I understand by a miracle a violation of a law of Nature
by a god, that is, a very powerful rational being who is not a material object
(viz., is invisible and intangible). My definition of a miracle is thus approxi-
mately the same as Hume's: "a transgression of a law of nature by a
particular volition of the Deity or by the interposition of some invisible
agent ".2 It has been questioned by many biblical scholars whether this is
what the biblical writers understood by the terms translated into English
'miracle '. I do not propose to enter into this controversy. Suffice it to
say that many subsequent Christian theologians have understood by 'mir-
acle ' roughly what I understand by the term and that much medieval and
modern apologetic which appeals to purported miracles as evidence of the
truth of the Christian revelation has had a similar understanding of miracle
to mine.
I shall take the question in two parts. I shall enquire first whether there
could be evidence that a law of nature has been violated, and secondly, if
there can be such evidence, whether there could be evidence that the
violation was due to a god.
First, then, can there be evidence that a law of nature has been violated ?
It seems natural to understand, as Ninian Smart3 does, by a violation of a
law of nature, an occurrence of a non-repeatable counter-instance to a law
of nature. Clearly, as Hume admitted, events contrary to predictions of
formulae which we had good reason to believe to be laws of nature often
occur. But if we have good reason to believe that they have occurred and
good reason to believe that similar events would occur in similar circum-
stances, then we have good reason to believe that the formulae which we
previously believed to be the laws of nature were not in fact such laws.
Repeatable counter-instances do not violate laws of nature, they just show
propositions purporting to state laws of nature to be false. But if we have good
reason to believe that an event E has occulrredcontrary to predictions of a
formula L which we have good reason to believe to be a law of nature, and we
have good reason to believe that events similar to E would not occurin circum-
1I am most grateful to Edgar Page and Christopher Williams for their helpful criti-
cisms of an earlier version of this paper.
2David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. L. A. Selby-
Bigge (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1902), p. 115, footnote.
3Ninian Smart, Philosophers and Religious Truth (London, 1964), Ch. II.
 MIRACLES 321
stances as similar as we like in any respect to those of the original occurrence,
then we do not have reason to believe that L is not a law of nature. For any
modified formula which allowed us to predict E would allow us to predict
similar events in similar circumstances and hence, we have good reason to
believe, would give false predictions. Whereas if we leave the formula L
unmodified, it will, we have good reason to believe, give correct predictions
in all other conceivable circumstances. Hence if we are to say that any law
of nature is operative in the field in question we must say that it is L. This
seems a natural thing to say rather than to say that no law of nature operates
in the field. Yet E is contrary to the predictions of L. Hence, for want of
a better expression, we say that E has violated the law of nature L. If the
use of the word 'violated' suggests too close an analogy between laws of
nature and civil or moral laws, that is unfortunate. Once we have explained,
as above, what is meant by a violation of a law of nature, no subsequent
confusion need arise.
The crucial question, not adequately discussed by Smart, however, is
what would be good reason for believing that an event E, if it occurred, was
a non-repeatable as opposed to a repeatable counter-instance to a formula
L which we have on all other evidence good reason to believe to be a law
of nature. The evidence that E is a repeatable counter-instance would be
that a new formula L1 fairly well confirmed by the data as a law of nature
can be set up. A formula is confirmed by data, if the data obtained so far
are predicted by the formula, if new predictions are successful and if the
formula is a simple and coherent one relative to the collection of data.
Compatible with any finite set of data, there will always be an infinite
number of possible formulae from which the data can be predicted. We can
rule out many by further tests, but however many tests we make we shall
still have only a finite number of data and hence an infinite number of
formulae compatible with them.
But some of these formulae will be highly complex relative to the data,
so that no scientist would consider that the data were evidence that those
formulae were true laws of nature. Others are very simple formulae such
that the data can be said to provide evidence that they are true laws of
nature. Thus suppose the scientist's task is to find a formula accounting
for marks on a graph, observed at (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), and (4, 4), the first
number of each pair being the x co-ordinate and the second the y co-ordinate.
One formula which would predict these marks is x = y. Another one is
(x - 1) (x - 2) (x - 3) (x - 4) + x = y. But clearly we would not regard
the data as supporting the second formula. It is too clumsy a formula to
explain four observations. Among simple formulae supported by the data,
the simplest is the best supported and regarded, provisionally, as correct.
If the formula survives further tests, that increases the evidence in its
favour as a true law.
Now if for E and for all other relevant data we can construct a formula
L1 from which the data can be derived and which either makes successful
322 R. G. SWINBURNE

predictions in other circumstances where L makes bad predictions, or is a

fairly simple formula, so that from the fact that it can predict E, and L
cannot, we have reason to believe that its predictions, if tested, would be
better than those of L in other circumstances, then we have good reason to
believe that L1 is the true law in the field. The formula will indicate under
what circumstances divergencies from L similar to E will occur. The evi-
dence thus indicates that they will occur under these circumstances and
hence that E is a repeatable counter-instance to the original formula L.
Suppose, however, that for E and all the other data of the field we can
construct no new formula L1 which yields more successful predictions than
L in other examined circumstances, nor one which is fairly simple relative to the
data; but for all the other data except E the simple formula L does yield
good predictions. And suppose that as the data continue to accumulate, L
remains a completely successful predictor and there remains no reason to
suppose that a simple formula L1 from which all the other data and E can
be derived can be constructed. The evidence then indicates that the diver-
gence from L will not be repeated and hence that E is a non-repeatable
counter-instance to a law of nature L.
Here is an example. Suppose E to be the levitation (viz., rising into the
air and remaining floating on it) of a certain holy person. E is a counter-
instance to otherwise well substantiated laws of mechanics L. We could
show E to be a repeatable counter-instance if we could construct a formula
L1 which predicted E and also successfully predicted other divergences from
L, as well as all other tested predictions of L; or if we could construct L1
which was comparatively simple relative to the data and predicted E and
all the other tested predictions of L, but predicted divergences from L
which had not yet been tested. L1 might differ from L in that, according
to it, under certain circumstances bodies exercise a gravitational repulsion
on each other, and the circumstance in which E occurred was one of those
circumstances. If L1 satisfied either of the above two conditions, we would
adopt it, and we would then say that under certain circumstances people
do levitate and so E was not a counter-instance to a law of nature. However,
it might be that any modification which we made to the laws of mechanics
to allow them to predict E might not yield any more successful predictions
than L and they be so clumsy that there was no reason to believe that their
predictions not yet tested would be successful. Under these circumstances
we would have good reasons to believe that the levitation of the holy person
violated the laws of nature.
If the laws of nature are statistical and not deterministic, it is not in all
cases so clear what counts as a counter-instance to them. How improbable
does an event have to be to constitute a counter-instance to a statistical
law ? But this problem is a general one in the philosophy of science and does
not raise any issues peculiar to the topic of miracles.
It is clear that all claims about what does or does not violate the laws
of nature are corrigible. New scientific knowledge may force us to revise
 MIRACLES 323

any such claims. But all claims to knowledge about matters of fact are
corrigible, and we must reach provisional conclusions about them on the
evidence available to us. We have to some extent good evidence about
what are the laws of nature, and some of them are so well established and
account for so many data that any modifications to them which we could
suggest to account for the odd counter-instance would be so clumsy and
ad hoc as to upset the whole structure of science. In such cases the evidence
is strong that if the purported counter-instance occurred it was a violation
of the laws of nature. There is good reason to believe that the following
events, if they occurred, would be violations of the laws of nature: levita-
tion; resurrection from the dead in full health of a man whose heart has
not been beating for twenty-four hours and who was, by other criteria also,
dead; water turning into wine without the assistance of chemical apparatus
or catalysts; a man getting better from polio in a minute.
So then we could have the evidence that an event E if it occurred was
a non-repeatable counter-instance to a true law of nature L. But Hume's
argument here runs as follows. The evidence, which ex hypothesi is good
evidence, that L is a true law of nature is evidence that E did not occur.
We have certain other evidence that E did occur. In such circumstances,
writes Hume, the wise man " weighs the opposite experiments. He considers
which side is supported by the greater number of experiments ".4 Since he
supposes that the evidence that E occurred would be that of testimony,
Hume concludes "that 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 ".5 He considers
that this condition is not in fact satisfied by any purported miracle, though
he seems at times to allow that it is logically possible that it might be.
One wonders here at Hume's scale of evidence. Suppose two hundred
witnesses claiming to have observed some event E, an event which, if it
occurred, would be a non-repeatable counter-instance to a law of nature.
Suppose these to be witnesses able and anxious to show that E did not
occur if there were grounds for doing so. Would not their combined evidence
give us good reason to believe that E occurred? Hume's answer which we
can see from his discussion of two apparently equally well authenticated
miracles is-No. But then, one is inclined to say, is not Hume just being
bigoted, refusing to face facts ? It would be virtually impossible to draw
up a table showing how many witnesses and of what kind we need to establish
the occurrence of an event which, if it occurred, would be a non-repeatable
counter-instance to a law of nature. Each purported instance has to be
considered on its merits. But certainly one feels that Hume's standards of
evidence are too high. What, one wonders, would Hume himself say if he
saw such an event ?
But behind Hume's excessively stringent demands on evidence there
40p. cit., p. 111.
sOp. cit., p. 116.
324 R. G. SWINBURNE

may be a philosophical point which he has not fully brought out. This is a
point made by Flew in justification of Hume's standards of evidence:
" The justification for giving the 'scientific ' this ultimate precedence here
over the 'historical ' lies in the nature of the propositions concerned and in
the evidence which can be displayed to sustain them . . . the candidate
historical proposition will be particular, often singular, and in the past
tense. . . . But just by reason of this very pastness and particularity it is
no longer possible for anyone to examine the subject directly for himself
. . .the law of nature will, unlike the candidate historical proposition, be a
general nomological. It can thus in theory, though obviously not always in
practice, be tested at any time by any person".6
Flew's contrast is, however, mistaken. Particular experiments on par-
ticular occasions only give a certain and far from conclusive support to
claims that a purported scientific law is true. Any person can test for the
truth of a purported scientific law, but a positive result to one test will
only give limited support to the claim. Exactly the same holds for purported
historical truths. Anyone can examine the evidence, but a particular piece
of evidence only gives limited support to the claim that the historical
proposition is true. But in the historical as in the scientific case, there is
no limit to the amount of evidence. We can go on and on testing for the
truth of historical as well as scientific propositions. We can look for more
and more data which can only be explained as effects of some specified past
event, and data incompatible with its occurrence, just as we can look for
more and more data for or against the truth of some physical law. Hence
the truth of the historical proposition can also " be tested at any time by
any person ".
What Hume seems to suppose is that the only evidence about whether
an event E happened is the written or verbal testimony of those who would
have been in a position to witness it, had it occurred. And as there will be
only a finite number of such pieces of testimony, the evidence about whether
or not E happened would be finite. But this is not the only testimony which
is relevant-we need testimony about the character and competence of the
original witnesses. Nor is testimony the only type of evidence. All effects
of what happened at the time of the alleged occurrence of E are also relevant.
Far more than in Hume's day we are today often in a position to assess
what occurred by studying the physical traces of the event. Hume had
never met Sherlock Holmes with his ability to assess what happened in the
room from the way in which the furniture lay, or where the witness was
yesterday from the mud on his boot. As the effects of what happened at
the time of the occurrence of E are always with us in some form, we can
always go on examining them yet more carefully. Further, we need to
investigate whether E, if it did occur, would in fact have brought about
the present effects, and whether any other cause could have brought about
just these effects. To investigate these issues involves investigating which
6Antony Flew, Hume's Philosophy of Belief (London, 1961), pp. 207 ff.
 MIRACLES 325

scientific laws operate (other than the law L of which it is claimed that E
was a violation), and this involves doing experiments ad lib. Hence there
is no end to the amount of new evidence which can be had. The evidence
that the event E occurred can go on mounting up in the way that evidence
that L is a law of nature can do. The wise man in these circumstances will
surely say that he has good reason to believe that E occurred, but also that
L is a true law of nature and so that E was a violation of it.
So we could have good reason to believe that a law of nature has been
violated. But for a violation of a law of nature to be a miracle, it has to be
caused by a god, that is, a very powerful rational being who is not a material
object. What could be evidence that it was ?
To explain an event as brought about by a rational agent with intentions
and purposes is to give an entirely different kind of explanation of its
occurrence from an explanation by scientific laws acting on precedent
causes. Our normal grounds for attributing an event to the agency of an
embodied rational agent A is that we or others perceived A bringing it
about or that it is the sort of event that A typically brings about and that
A, and no one else of whom we have knowledge, was in a position to bring
it about. The second kind of ground is only applicable when we have prior
knowledge of the existence of A. In considering evidence for a violation
E of a law of nature being due to the agency of a god, I will distinguish two
cases, one where we have good reason on grounds other than the occurrence
of violations of laws of nature to believe that there exists at least one god,
and one where we do not.
Let us take the second case first. Suppose we have no other good reason
for believing that a god exists, but an event E then occurs which, our evi-
dence indicates, is a non-repeatable counter-instance to a true law of nature.
Now we cannot attribute E to the agency of a god by seeing the god's body
bring E about, for gods do not have bodies. But suppose that E occurs in
ways and circumstances C strongly analogous to those in which occur events
brought about by human agents, and that other violations occur in such
circumstances. We would then be justified in claiming that E and other
such violations are, like effects of human actions, brought about by agents,
but ones unlike men in not being material objects. This inference would be
justified because, if an analogy between effects is strong enough, we are
always justified in postulating slight difference in causes to account for
slight difference in effects. Thus if because of its other observable behaviour
we say that light is a disturbance in a medium, then the fact that the medium,
if it exists, does not, like other media, slow down material bodies passing
through it, is not by itself (viz., if there are no other disanalogies) a reason
for saying that the light is not a disturbance in a medium, but only for saying
that the medium in which light is a disturbance has the peculiar property of
not resisting the passage of material bodies. So if, because of very strong
similarity between the ways and circumstances of the occurrence of E and
other violations of laws of nature to the ways and circumstances in which
326 R. G. SWINBURNE

effects are produced by human agents, we postulate a similar cause-a

rational agent, the fact that there are certain disanalogies (viz., we cannot
point to the agent, say where his body is) does not mean that our explanation
is wrong. It only means that the agent is unlike humans in not having a
body. But this move is only justified if the similarities are otherwise strong.
Nineteenth-century scientists eventually concluded that for light the similar-
ities were not strong enough to outweigh the dissimilarities and justify
postulating the medium with the peculiar property.
Now what similarities in the ways and circumstances C of their occurrence
could there be between E (and other violations of laws of nature) and the
effects of human actions to justify the postulation of similar causes ? Sup-
pose that E occurred in answer to a request. Thus E might be an explosion
in my room, totally inexplicable by the laws of nature, when at the time of
its occurrence there were in a room on the other side of the corridor men in
turbans chanting " 0 God of the Sikhs, may there be an explosion in Swin-
burne's room ". Suppose, too, that when E occurs a voice, but not the voice
of an embodied agent, is heard giving reasonable reasons for granting the
request. When the explosion occurs in my room, a voice emanating from
no man or animal or man-made machine is heard saying " Your request is
granted. He deserves a lesson ". Would not all this be good reason for postu-
lating a rational agent other than a material object who brought about E
and the other violations, an agent powerful enough to change instantaneously
by intervention the properties of things, viz., a god ? Clearly if the analogy
were strong enough between the ways and circumstances in which violations
of laws of nature and effects of human action occur, it would be. If further-
more the prayers which were answered by miracles were prayers for certain
kinds of events (e.g., relief of suffering, punishment of ill-doers) and those
which were not answered by miracles were for events of different kinds,
then this would show something about the character of the god. Normally,
of course, the evidence adduced by theists for the occurrence of miracles
is not as strong as I have indicated that very strong evidence would be.
Violations are often reported as occurring subsequent to prayer for them to
occur, and seldom otherwise; but voices giving reason for answering such
a request are rare indeed. Whether in cases where voices are not heard
but the occurrence of a violation E and of prayer for its occurrence were
both well confirmed, we would be justified in concluding that the existence of a
god who brought E about is a matter of whether the analogy is strong enough
as it stands. The question of exactly when an analogy is strong enough to
justify an inference based on it is a difficult one. But my only point here
is that if the analogy were strong enough, the inference would be justified.
Suppose now that we have other evidence for the existence of a god.
Then if E occurs in the circumstances C, previously described, that E is due
to the activity of a god is more adequately substantiated, and the occurrence
of E gives further support to the evidence for the existence of a god. But
if we already have reason to believe in the existence of a god, the occurrence
 MIRACLES 327

of E not under circumstances as similar as C to those under which human

agents often bring about results, could nevertheless sometimes be justifiably
attributed to his activity. Thus, if the occurrence of E is the sort of thing
that the only god of whose existence we have evidence would wish to bring
about if he has the character suggested by the other evidence for his existence,
we can reasonably hold him responsible for the occurrence of E which would
otherwise be unexplained. The healing of a faithful blind Christian contrary
to the laws of nature could reasonably be attributed to the God of the Christ-
ians, if there were other evidence for his existence, whether or not the blind
man or other Christians had ever prayed for that result.
For these reasons I conclude that we can have good reason to believe
that a violation of a law of nature was caused by a god, and so was a miracle.
I would like to make two final points, one to tidy up the argument and
the other to meet a further argument put forward by Hume which I have
not previously discussed.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.-Unless we have good
reason to do so we ought not to postulate the existence of more than one
god, but to suppose that the same being answers all prayers. But there could
be good reason to postulate the existence of more than one god, and evidence
to this effect could be provided by miracles. One way in which this could
happen is that prayers for a certain kind of result, for example, shipwreck,
which began " O, Neptune " were often answered, and also prayers for a
different kind of result, for example, success in love, which began " 0,
Venus " were also often answered, but prayers for a result of the first kind
beginning " O, Venus ", and for a result of the second kind beginning " 0,
Neptune " were never answered. Evidence for the existence of one god
would in general support, not oppose, evidence for the existence of a second
one since, by suggesting that there is one rational being other than those
whom we can see, it makes more reasonable the postulation of another one.
The second point is that there is no reason at all to suppose that Hume is
in general right to claim that " every miracle . . . pretended to have been
wrought in any . . . (religion) . . . as its direct scope is to establish the
particular system to which it is attributed; so has it the same force, though
more indirectly, to overthrow every other system. In destroying a rival
system it likewise destroys the credit of those miracles on which that system
was established ".7 If Hume were right to claim that evidence for the
miracles of one religion was evidence against the miracles of any other,
then indeed evidence for miracles in each would be poor. But in fact evidence
for a miracle " wrought in one religion " is only evidence against the occur-
rence of a miracle " wrought in another religion " if the two miracles, if they
occurred, would be evidence for propositions of the two religious systems
incompatible with each other. It is hard to think of pairs of alleged miracles
of this type. If there were evidence for a Roman Catholic miracle which was
evidence for the doctrine of transubstantiation and evidence for a Protestant
70p. cit., pp. 121. ff.
328 R. G. SWINBURNE

miracle which was evidence against it, here we would have a case of the
conflict of evidence which, Hume claims, occurs generally with alleged
miracles. But it is enough to give this example to see that most alleged
miracles do not give rise to conflicts of this kind. Most alleged miracles, if
they occurred, would only show the power of god or gods and their concern
for the needs of men, and little else.
My main conclusion, to repeat it, is that there are no logical difficulties
in supposing that there could be strong historical evidence for the occurrence
of miracles. Whether there is such evidence is, of course, another matter.

University of Hull.