How can miracles be possible?

The following statements, one ancient and one modern, are typical of people’s reactions to the miraculous.

“For nothing can happen without a cause; nothing happens that cannot happen; and if what could have happened has happened, it is not to be interpreted as a miracle. Consequently, there are no miracles….. Therefore, we draw the following conclusion: what could have happened is not a miracle” (Cicero, De Divinatione , 2,28).

“For example, there is the account of the life of Jesus Christ in the Bible. This account contains narratives of events which, viewed in the light of the known facts of the natural order, could not have happened.

Children are not born of virgins, angels do not carry messages to people, men do not walk on water, people who die do not come back to life, etc.

The story of Jesus Christ was full of things that people knew were impossible; therefore, the story could not be a literal account of real events.

When the New Testament was written, people may have been naive enough to believe the things that were said about Jesus and perhaps saw no contradiction between the reports and their knowledge of the world, but now everything was different” ( Protestantism , quoted by J. Leslie Dunstan, Washington Square Press, Inc., New York, 1962, pages 128-129).

Many laugh at the idea that miracles might be possible. They claim that miracles are a violation of the laws of nature and therefore unacceptable to modern man. The Scriptures, however, contain stories of miracles from beginning to end. There are reports of blind people suddenly regaining their sight, of the dead being raised to life, and of extraordinary events in nature, such as a global flood and the parting of the Red Sea.

The basis for believing in the miraculous is based on the biblical concept of God. The first verse of the Bible decides the question: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

If it can be accepted that this verse says that a personal and infinite God created the universe in the beginning, then the rest should not be a problem. If He has the ability to do this, then the virgin birth, the act of walking on water, feeding 5,000 people with a few loaves and fishes, and the other biblical miracles become not only possible, but even expected.

Of course, if one does not believe in God, one will not accept the miraculous, but for one who considers the real possibility, it is not ridiculous at all. As the apostle Paul once said to an unbelieving king, “Why do you find it incredible that God raises the dead?” (Acts 26:8).

So behind this important question lies the well-known problem of whether God exists or not. For if there is a God, then miracles are certainly possible. Indeed, the very nature of the question, “How can miracles be possible?” presupposes that there is a God, for a miracle is an act of God.

As for the idea that miracles violate the laws of nature or science, we must remember that the laws of science do not dictate or explain events. They are simply a generalization of causes and effects that can be observed.

One cannot reject the claim that the Red Sea parted 3,500 years ago by saying that this event does not happen every day. One cannot appeal to the laws of nature to deny the miraculous, since the Bible teaches that an all-powerful God has from time to time intervened in the natural order with mighty acts.

A miracle is, by definition, a unique and unprecedented event. We cannot judge it like other events. The correct way to determine whether something happened is not to ask whether we can explain it. The first question to ask is not: could it happen, but: did it happen?

If it can be established that an event happened but that it defies explanation, we must still admit the fact that it happened, explained or not.

The evidence for biblical miracles is historically as strong as that for other historical events (such as the fall of Rome and the conquest of Alexander the Great). The fact that miracles are outside normal daily experience does not mean that they have not happened or are not happening.
So, given all the evidence, there are excellent reasons not to believe in the possibility of miracles, but also in their reality.