The Concept of Miracle by Richard Swinburne
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The Dirty Christian Secret

Richard Swinburne is a stalwart of Christian apologetics. His apparent aim over a long career is to convince the world that the Christian God is the only deity that makes and sense, and that the 17th century philosopher Leibniz was correct about this being the best of all possible worlds. He wrote The Concept of Miracle in 1970. Yet this week he is giving a lecture at my old Oxford College on related topics. In preparation for his talk, I took time to read this book again after many years. Swinburne, I discover, is not only long-lived, he is also consistent, still peddling the same ideas, largely to the already converted. I think his impact on the rest of us is minimal.

Swinburne defines a miracle as “the violation of a law of nature by a god.” This is in line with the thought of Thomas Aquinas and other important theologians who have considered the topic. But Swinburne takes it almost verbatim from Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, presumably to give it the appearance of enlightened secular modernity.

This definition in itself is revelatory. Like the religion from which it emanates, Christianity, it makes the standard of the miraculous the linguistic coherence of an event. If we can explain it, it’s not miraculous.

But any law of nature is necessarily a statement or formula about the world, in natural or scientific language. The only thing we know for certain about any such statement or formula is that it is unstable; it will change. A miracle therefore is that which doesn’t make sense to those who perceive it as such. So at any point in time, the best that can be said of the miraculous is that it is a tentative conclusion. Swinburne calls this issue a matter of different Weltanschauungen, or world-views and leaves the matter open as an epistemological issue of fact-finding.

But such a concept of miracle has more profound implications than the probability of its verification. The consequence of such a definition is that, by current theoretical standards, the world as we know it is a continuous infinite series of miracles. Quantum Theory very clearly makes no sense. Its verified claim of instantaneous action at a distance, for example, suffers from the same defect as Newton’s theory of gravity. And every prior natural theory had equivalent unexplainable phenomena. According to Swinburne, therefore, all of the phenomena which compromise these theories are miraculous.

And this consequence, of course, is a product of Christianity’s linguistic idolatry. As a dogmatic religion, Christianity is fundamentally dependent upon its interpretations of scriptures and its doctrinal pronouncements. That is, Christianity is a purely literary religion. Unlike Judaism, which is also a religion of the book, Christian creeds constitute the substance of redeeming faith. Behaviour is of secondary importance if it matters at all. And even behaviour is supposedly generated by faith through the confession of the correct words. Language has always been the Christian standard of membership and salvation.

In the same vein, Swinburne’s mention of ‘a god’ is a disingenuous linguistic ploy. The only god capable of altering natural laws is one which created natural laws. Such a god, as for example with various pagan gods, does not merely use its power within the bounds of natural law to ease human life or make it more miserable. This is a god that is not simply inconceivably powerful but one that essentially defines what power means. This is, in other words, the god of language. Or, less theologically, it is Language itself. This then is the Christian God - Language.

Swinburne spends the bulk of his essay dissecting the evidence for and against his Humean definition of miracle. The fact that he is doing nothing more than sharpening the linguistic tool of Christianity doesn’t bother him in the least. He probably doesn’t even notice what he’s up to. He is after all rationalising the irrationalities of faith by building up faith’s linguistic pedigree even more solidly than the Church has done over millennia.

In Christianity ethics is subsidiary to faith. What Swinburne does not even touch upon is the ethical aspect of miracles. In particular the theodicy of miracles, that is, God’s ethics in changing the laws of nature, doesn’t even get a mention. This is a subject universally avoided by philosophical theologians. The issue is this: if the world created by God is ‘good’ as biblically claimed, then why would it be necessary to alter natural laws? Does such alteration make the world an even better place? If so why not make such changes permanent, not just physical laws, but also the laws of human cognition and behavioural response?

The biblical tales of vengeful floods, fiery destruction, and the sending of a redeemer do suggest that the Christian God did take a somewhat experimental punt in the business of creation. Even with several iterations he has failed to get the hang of it. Meanwhile the magnitude of such intense suffering caused by his actions continues to increase daily. No, I’m afraid that if this Christian God exists, he is less than a benevolent, much less competent, entity. And the idea of miracles contains that dirty little secret within it.

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