For some 15 centuries, the Western world took the category of miracles largely for granted. If the Church taught that God works miracles, then he does. If he created the universe, he can intervene in his creation whenever he wishes.

In the last four centuries, however, intellectual wars have raged over the issue of supernaturalism. We'll look at each of the battles in turn, listening to the critic of the supernatural and then defending the miraculous.

The first major attack on supernaturalism would not come until the 17th century. Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77) argued that all of reality is embraced within a single, rational substance. His pantheism viewed God as all that is. God must be immutable to be God; thus all reality is equally immutable. An unchangeable reality must operate according to unchanging laws. But miracles change the laws of nature. Therefore, miracles cannot exist.

Spinoza's mindset is still defended by deists like Jefferson, and by materialists who deny the spiritual or divine altogether. Jefferson would say that God does not violate the laws by which his universe operates. A materialistic atheist would say that there is no possibility of the "supernatural" within the natural, so that God cannot exist. The result is the same: miracles are by definition impossible.

One response to this critique is to expose its presuppositions. If a skeptic begins by denying the ability or willingness of the Creator to intervene in his creation, of course miracles are impossible. If God does not exist, obviously he cannot do the supernatural. But such an argument does not answer the question--it begs it. It is no solution to deny the existence of the problem.

Antony Flew's "falsification principle" is worth considering in this regard. Flew claimed that Christianity is irrational, since nothing can falsify its beliefs. According to his critique, Christians will allow no evidence or logic to refute their faith. Of course, Paul identified the ultimate falsification of the Christian movement: "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Cor 15:14).

It seems to me that Flew's thesis is more damaging to materialism than to supernaturalism. The skeptic who begins his argument by the de facto denial of the supernatural cannot allow any evidence to count against his presupposition. If Jesus could not be raised from the dead, for instance, all arguments citing the empty tomb and changed lives of the disciples are of no avail. A person who can admit no criteria by which her position can be refuted is not defending a rational argument, but a mere opinion.

David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher known to history as the "father of skepticism," was especially skeptical about miracles. His work on the subject made clear his doubts.

Hume was willing to admit the plausibility of a miracle, if those who claim to witness it meet certain criteria. Those who claim to have seen the miraculous must be:

• Numerous; the more who see the miracle, the more likely their testimony. A hermit living in a mountain cave who witnesses a UFO is less believable than a crowd who sees the same phenomenon.
• Intelligent; a person of limited intellect might struggle to understand the "miracle" that I can type on this box and produce printed documents.
• Educated; to those who have never learned about airplanes, one flying overhead is a miracle of the highest significance.
• Of unquestioned integrity; the person selling his encounter with an alien is less credible than one with nothing to profit.
• Willing to undergo severe loss if wrong; the more insistent and sacrificial the witness, the more likely her story. People don't die for a lie.
• In a region of the world where the story can be validated; claims that drinking water at the House of Mary outside Ephesus possess healing powers are more credible for those who are able to visit the shrine and witness its effects.

Hume believed that no eyewitness to the miraculous could withstand such scrutiny. Of course, he was wrong. Those who witnessed the resurrected Christ meet each of Hume's criteria:

• Numerous: more than 500 saw the risen Lord (1 Cor 15:6).
• Intelligent: several of the apostles owned and operated a fishing business (Lk 5:1-11); another was a tax-collector, a demanding intellectual profession (Mt 9:9); Paul was one of the most brilliant scholars of his day.
• Educated: Paul was trained by Gamaliel (Ac 22:3), a man of "great learning" (Ac 26:24). The other disciples were schooled in the Scriptures, able to quote at length from memory. The Sanhedrin's assessment that the disciples were "unschooled, ordinary men" (Ac 4:13) meant only that they had not attended rabbinic schools.
• Of unquestioned integrity: of all the criticisms brought against Christians in the book of Acts, no skeptic thought to attack their character. They were known even to their enemies to be people of honesty.
• Willing to undergo severe loss: all but John were martyred, and he was exiled on the prison island of Patmos.
• Able to be validated: Joseph of Arimathea's empty tomb was available to any who wished to see it. Paul could say of Agrippa, "The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner" (Ac 26:26).

Miracles are implausible only to those whose presuppositions render them so. If, on the other hand, the Creator of the earth is also a loving Father to its residents, he will want a personal relationship with his children. No father can watch his family impassively as a clockmaker watches his invention run down. He will intervene in their lives often.

If there is a personal God who desires relationship with us, deistic naturalism is far less plausible than supernaturalism.

Science operates according to certain empirical laws. Its method begins with a theory, which is then tested. If the data support the theory, the experiment is repeated. Only if repeatable evidence supports the theory, is it considered valid.

Miracles are by definition not subject to this method. A woman in the first church I pastored was told she had pancreatic cancer and given three months to live. We prayed fervently for her. The next week she returned to her doctor, who could find no evidence of the malignancy. We believed that God worked a miracle. A scientist would need to repeat the conditions which led to this occurrence, before making such a judgment. Because miracles are not testable and repeatable, they are not "scientific."

As a result, some believe they cannot admit the possibility of the miraculous and remain true to the scientific worldview. But such a conclusion is hardly warranted. No relationship can be verified by a test tube, especially a personal relationship with the God of the universe. A physicist can no more test and verify her husband's love for her children than she can her heavenly Father's love for his.

A woman once told me that she would come to my church if I could prove that God loves us. I asked her to prove that her husband loves her. She smiled and said, "He tells me that he does." I told her that he could be lying. She described loving things he did for her. I replied that he could be manipulating and misleading her. Finally she said, "You'd have to be part of my family to understand." I said, "You'd have to be part of my Father's family to understand as well."

Miracles must be seen within the Christian context if they are to be given a fair hearing. Those who deny the miraculous by definition have obviously disqualified themselves as interpreters of claims to the miraculous. Science and history are treatments of the natural order. The supernatural is by definition beyond their realm of investigation.

Still other skeptics argue that miracles are leftover vestiges of an earlier era. Those who accept this argument make strange bedfellows, indeed.

Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx, proponents of atheistic materialism, taught that miracles are supernaturalistic wishes and nothing more. Since religion is the opiate of the people, its claim to perform miracles is a means of subjugating its believers. Those who hold onto the possibility of miracles are superstitious and naïve.

Dispensationalists argue that miracles are outdated, but for completely different reasons. This theological method divides biblical history into different "dispensations," periods of time in which God dealt with humanity in ways appropriate to that era. In this view, miracles ended with the early church. We now live in a post-apostolic era in which miracles are no longer necessary.

Some Calvinists share this rejection of miracles, for a third reason. Miracles were needed to establish the truth of Christian revelation, but are no longer needed today. In fact, they diminish the glory of God by suggesting that he must intervene in his imperfect creation.

Rudolf Bultmann, one of the most famous New Testament scholars of the 20th century, argued that miracles are outdated for yet a fourth reason. In his view, miracles are part of the first-century, pre-scientific worldview. As such, they act as stumbling blocks to the scientific age we are called to reach with the gospel. And so we need to reinterpret them spiritually, removing them as objections to faith.

Bultmann was clear: "Man's knowledge and mastery of the world have advanced to such an extent through science and technology that it is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world." We know that people do not "descend into hell" or "ascend into heaven." This three-tiered view of the universe must be replaced with the scientific model espoused today.

To remove these mythological problems, Bultmann proposed that we "demythologize" the biblical text. Jesus' walking on water is the victory of faith over the storms of doubt. Easter is the resurrection of faith in the disciples. By this approach we do not invalidate the gospel--we communicate it effectively to a new era.

Of course, Feuerbach and Marx deny the existence of the supernatural by definition. Their approach begs the question, and has already been discussed. Dispensational and Calvinist theologians cannot cite scriptural support for their rejection of contemporary miracles. Their position is the logical conclusion of their presuppositions, not biblical argument. It would be wrong for God to intervene in his creation only if he told us that he would not. And in fact, he assures us of just the opposite. If the Son could become man, the most complete insertion of divinity into humanity, any other supernatural act by his Father is possible.

Bultmann's program is not as attractive to scholars as it was a generation ago. We now know that the miraculous elements of the biblical worldview are foundational to its claims. We cannot spiritualize the historical elements of the story without losing all foundation in fact and experience. And without its historical foundations, a faith which worships One "which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched" (1 Jn 1:1) cannot stand.

In fact, changes in the scientific worldview over the last half-century have brought about a remarkable change in the way many scientists view the supernatural. Newtonian physics sought to explain the universe in terms of predictable mechanical causality. According to this approach, the world operates by "laws" which cannot be broken; hence miracles cannot occur.

But with Einstein's theory of relativity, these "laws" are considerably less binding on scientific exploration. Indeed, there has occurred a "radical reorientation in knowledge in which structure and matter, form and being are inseparably fused together, spelling the end of the analytical era in science."

Paradox is now a reality in scientific theory. For instance, physicists still debate the means by which light travels--particle or wave? A college science major attending one of my classes at Southwestern Seminary told us that in his lab the professor said, "Light travels as particle on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It travels as wave on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday it can do whatever it likes." This paradox is known as "Bohr's principle of complementarity."

Albert Einstein himself concluded, "You will find it surprising that I think of the comprehensibility of the world . . . as a miracle." He was right again.