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Miracles and violations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2010

TIMOTHY PRITCHARD
TIMOTHY PRITCHARD*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, King's College London, Strand, LondonWC2R 2LS
*
e-mail: timothy.pritchard@kcl.ac.uk
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Abstract

The claim that a miracle is a violation of a law of nature has sometimes been used as part of an a priori argument against the possibility of miracle, on the grounds that a violation is conceptually impossible. I criticize these accounts but also suggest that alternative accounts, when phrased in terms of laws of nature, fail to provide adequate conceptual space for miracles. It is not clear what a ‘violation’ of a law of nature might be, but this is not relevant to the question of miracles. In practice, accounts of miracle tend to be phrased in terms of God's act not in terms of laws of nature. Finally, I suggest that the a priori argument reflects an intellectual commitment that is widely held, though wrongly built into the argument itself.

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Type
Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 41 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Notes

1. See Ward, K. ‘Believing in miracles’, Zygon, 37 (2002), 741–750CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nichols, T. L. ‘Miracles in science and theology’, Zygon, 37 (2002), 703–715CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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3. Ibid., 309.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 312.

6. Ibid., 312f.

7. Ibid., 309.

8. Ibid., 312.

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10. Ibid., 349.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

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14. Ibid., 74.

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17. N. Smart Philosophers and Religious Truth (London: SCM Press, 1964).

18. R. Swinburne The Concept of Miracle (London: Macmillan, 1970).

19. Ibid., 28.

20. Ibid., 26.

21. Smart Philosophers and Religious Truth, 37.

22. Ibid., 35.

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28. Lowe ‘Sortal terms and natural laws’, 253.

29. See idem ‘Miracles and laws of nature’, 274.

30. Idem ‘Sortal terms and natural laws’, 257.

31. Mumford ‘Normative and natural laws’, 275.

32. See G. E. Hughes and M. J. Cresswell A New Introduction to Modal Logic (London: Routledge, 1996), 43.

33. Mumford ‘Miracles and modality’, 191. Cf. Mavrodes, G. ‘Miracles and the laws of nature’, Faith and Philosophy, 2 (1985), 333–346CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who likewise thinks that a ‘legal’ modality is appropriate for laws of nature.

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35. Swinburne Concept of Miracle, 28f.

36. Lowe ‘Miracles and laws’, 276.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., 276f.

39. Ibid., 276.

40. Mumford ‘Normative and natural laws’, 279.

41. Idem ‘Miracles and modality’, 192.

42. Idem ‘Normative and natural laws’, 280.

43. Ibid., 278f.

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45. Ibid.

46. W. Alston ‘How to think about divine action’, in B. Hebblethwaite and E. Henderson (eds) Divine Action: Studies inspired by the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer (Edinburgh: T & T Clarke, 1990), 51–70, 56. Cf. Clarke, S. ‘The supernatural and the miraculous’, Sophia, 46 (2007), 277–285CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 280: ‘it … seems logically possible that nonnatural entities and beings could intervene in the natural world without violating any particular laws of nature. Therefore, it is possible to make a coherent sense of supernatural intervention in the natural world without invoking violations of laws of nature.’

47. Hughes, C. ‘Miracles, laws of nature and causation’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume, 66 (1992), 179–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 186.

48. Larmer, R. ‘Miracles and the laws of nature’, Dialogue, 24 (1985), 225–235Google Scholar.

49. Idem ‘Miracles and conservation laws: a reply to Professor MacGill’, Sophia, 31: 1/2 (1992), 89–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 94.

50. Hughes ‘Miracles’, 185.

51. Ibid., 186.

52. Larmer, R. ‘Miracles and criteria’, Sophia, 23: 1 (1984), 4–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. McKinnon ‘Miracle’, 309.

54. G. Robinson ‘Miracles’.

55. Ibid. 159.

56. I would like to thank Christopher Hughes, and an anonymous referee for this journal whose comments on an earlier draft led to a significant improvement in the paper. The research was originally supported by a postgraduate grant from the (as then) Arts and Humanities Research Board, and by a Jacobsen bursary from the Royal Institute of Philosophy.