miracle

/mir"euh keuhl/, n.

1. an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.

2. such an effect or event manifesting or considered as a work of God.

3. a wonder; marvel.

4. a wonderful or surpassing example of some quality: a miracle of modern acoustics.

5. See miracle play.

[1125-75; ME miracle, miracul ( < OF miracle) < L miraculum, equiv. to mira(ri) to wonder at + -culum -CLE²]

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Extraordinary event attributed to a supernatural power.

Belief in miracles exists in all cultures and nearly all religions. The Upanishads assert that the experience of religious insight and transformation is the only "miracle" worth considering, but popular Hinduism attributes miraculous powers to the ascetic yogis. Confucianism had little room for miracles. Daoism, however, mingled with Chinese folk religion to produce a rich crop of miracles. Though Buddha Gautama deprecated his own miraculous powers as devoid of spiritual significance, accounts of his miraculous birth and life were later woven into his legend and into those of later Buddhist saints. Miracles are taken for granted throughout the Hebrew scriptures and were fairly common in the Greco-Roman world. The New Testament records miracles of healing and other wonders performed by Jesus. Miracles also attest to the holiness of Christian saints. Muhammad renounced miracles as a matter of principle (the Qurān was the great miracle), but his life was later invested with miraculous details. Muslim popular religion, particularly under the influence of Sufism, abounds in miracles and wonder-working saints.

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Introduction

      extraordinary and astonishing happening that is attributed to the presence and action of an ultimate or divine power.

Nature and significance

      A miracle is generally defined, according to the etymology of the word—it comes from the Greek thaumasion and the Latin miraculum—as that which causes wonder and astonishment, being extraordinary in itself and amazing or inexplicable by normal standards. Because that which is normal and usual is also considered as natural, miracles have occasionally been defined as supernatural events, but this definition presupposes a very specific conception of nature (nature, philosophy of) and natural laws and cannot, therefore, be generally applied. The significance of a miraculous event is frequently held to reside not in the event as such but in the reality to which it points (e.g., the presence or activity of a divine power); thus, a miracle is also called a sign—from the Greek sēmeion (biblical Hebrew ot)—signifying and indicating something beyond itself. Extraordinary and astonishing occurrences become specifically religious (religious experience) phenomena when they express, reveal, or signify a religious reality, however defined.

      Belief in miraculous happenings is a feature of practically all religions, and the incidence of miracles (i.e., of belief in and reports regarding miracles) is universal, though their functions, nature, purpose, and explanations vary with the social and cultural—including theological and philosophical—context in which they appear. However inexplicable, all miracles have an explanation in the sense that they are accounted for in terms of the religious and cultural system that supports them and that, in turn, they are meant to support. Without such an accompanying—explicit or implicit—theory (e.g., the presence, activity, and intervention of such realities as gods, spirits, or magical powers), there would be no miracles in the aforementioned sense but only unexplained phenomena.

Types and functions of miracles

      There is no general rule determining the types of occurrences that can be classified as miracles; they vary according to the cultural matrix of beliefs and assumptions. The mythological accounts of the origins of the gods and their activities in the primeval past, as well as accounts of the activities of other primeval beings, such as first ancestors and culture heroes, should, perhaps, not be classed as miracles, and the term is better reserved for outer, objective events—as distinct from such phenomena as inner experiences and visions—that can be regarded as divine interventions or as manifestations of divine or supernatural powers. In many cultures, primitive as well as some that were more highly developed, such as the ancient classical and Oriental civilizations, the operation of extraordinary forces was taken for granted and was integrated into the total world picture and into the procedures and the modes of action—e.g., magic, oracles, divination, and shamanism—of ordinary life. There were certain kinds of divine or spirit action and of cosmic operation that were considered to be a part of the normal order of things, even though it was generally admitted that priests and shamans would frequently resort to deception in their diverse activities, which included such manifestations as prophecy, oracles, healing, magic, and judgment by ordeal.

Revelation and signification

      The purpose of a miracle may be in the direct and immediate result of the event—e.g., deliverance from imminent danger (thus, the passage of the children of Israel through the Red Sea in the Old Testament book of Exodus, chapter 14), cure of illness, or provision of plenty to the needy. Nevertheless, the ultimate purpose frequently is the demonstration of the power of the god or of the saint, the “man of God” through whom the god works, to whom the miracle is attributed. Thus, the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites is described not solely in terms of salvation from great danger but as a revelation of the saving presence of God and of the consequent obligation to serve and obey him; according to the account in Exodus: “and Israel saw the great work which the Lord did against the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord; and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.” The purpose of a miraculous occurrence is thus often to reveal a divine reality or numinous dimension. The occurrence may be an event concerned with natural needs or situations, such as illness, hunger, or distress, or a specifically religious event that effects some form of salvation or revelation, such as the theophany on Mt. Sinai in which God gave to Moses the Ten Commandments, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the revelation of the Qurʾān to Muḥammad. Even in these specifically religious events, the miraculous element is not necessarily of the essence but occurs as merely an accompanying circumstance designed to arrest the attention and to impress on everyone the unique character and significance of the occasion. Thus, theoretically at least, the theophany at Mt. Sinai could have taken place without thunder and lightning; Jesus need not have been born of a virgin; Muḥammad need not have made his miraculous journey to heaven. In actual fact, however, the very nature and quality of a religious event attracts miraculous elements, elaborations, and embellishments; and thus, for example, the founders of almost all religions are at the centre of great miracle cycles, and miracles occur as a rule in connection with persons and objects of religious significance, such as saints, sacraments, relics, holy images, and the like.

Authentication

      In practice it is difficult to distinguish the revelatory or signifying miracles from miracles of authentication—i.e., miraculous happenings that serve: (1) as credentials for claimants to religious authority in the form of leadership (e.g., in Exodus, chapter 4, Moses convinces the Israelites of the authenticity of his mission by miraculous performances) or prophecy (e.g., in Deuteronomy, chapter 18, it is said that a prophet (prophecy) is disqualified if the sign that he has predicted does not come to pass); (2) as the demonstration of the superior power of a particular god (e.g., in Exodus, chapter 7, Aaron's staff swallowed up the staffs of the Egyptian magicians, which showed the superiority of the God of the Israelites); (3) as proof of the sanctity of a holy man, a holy site, or a holy object; or (4) more generally as evidence of the truth of a particular religion.

Sources of miracles

Spiritual sources

      The source of miracles is always a divine, spiritual, supernatural, sacred, or numinous power that may be conceived in personal form (e.g., God, gods, spirits) or impersonal form (e.g., mana or magic). The sacred may manifest itself in natural phenomena, such as thunderstorms or earthquakes, that evoke appropriate feelings of awe, but these are not usually considered miracles unless attended by special circumstances—e.g., being predicted by a “man of God” or coinciding with an event of religious significance. As reported in the Gospel According to Matthew, chapter 27, at the moment of Jesus' death on the cross, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” The belief that thunder and lightning are manifestations of divine powers is very common, and many deities have been interpreted as personifying them or at least as being symbolized by them. Even in the Old Testament, thunderstorms and lightnings appear as manifestations or messengers of God. In this respect, the account of the theophany granted to the prophet Elijah in I Kings, chapter 19, marks a milestone in the history of religions, for “behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice” in which Elijah heard God.

      In most cases theophanies and divine manifestations occur for a specific purpose: giving laws (e.g., Moses and the theophany at Mt. Sinai; events in the lives of Numa Pompilius of Rome, Minos of Crete, and Lycurgus of Sparta, the ancient lawgivers in classical legend); saving interventions (e.g., the voices resounding from the temple of Athena Pronaea in Delphi that caused the Persians to retreat); and the founding of cults (e.g., the appearances of Mary, the mother of Jesus, at Lourdes, France, and Fatima, Portugal). Gods would appear to their devotees in visions and dreams, but these experiences should, perhaps, not be treated under the same general heading with other miracles. Immediate divine action was often perceived in omens preceding important undertakings, in apparently natural phenomena occurring providentially at critical moments or in miraculous—i.e., sudden and seemingly impossible—cures. In most cases, however, such divine interventions took place through some form of mediation, human or inanimate.

Human and inanimate sources

      Man can be the object of miracles, as when his disease is miraculously healed, or their subject, as when he performs miracles, such as healing (faith healing) others, in the name of whatever power is moving him. The two aspects cannot always be strictly distinguished, as is seen in the case of saints (saint) whose bodies are immune from corruption after death or founders of religions whose birth is attended by supernatural manifestations. Generally speaking, however, it is the role of holy personages—and of their tombs and relics—as sources of miracles that are of importance in the history of religions and more especially in the history of popular cults.

Founders of religions

      The attitudes of the founders of the great religions toward miracles vary considerably, but all have become the subject of legends of the most fantastic kind in popular belief, and much of this legendary material has been subsequently canonized in scripture and tradition.

Holy persons

      Much closer to the lives and devotion of ordinary folk than the superhuman figures of the founders are the saints, monks, ascetics, and diverse kinds of holy men and women. The attitude toward saints and their miracles is very much the same on the popular levels of all religions, although the theoretical interpretations on the more theological level vary considerably. In Far Eastern religions it is often difficult to distinguish between saints and hero gods, because great men of renowned virtue can be deified and venerated and even receive officially approved state cults. Miracles occur as a matter of course at their tombs and relics. In Muslim as well as in Christian belief, the occurrence of miracles is part of the requirements for official recognition of sainthood and is interpreted as a special intervention by God, who thereby manifests his esteem for the saint or, more essentially, his salvific presence as realized concretely in the life and virtues of the saint. In Indian—Hindu and Buddhist—belief, miraculous powers are the “natural” result of ascetic practice and spiritual realization and can thus be considered as an almost natural manifestation of magical or spiritual causes.

Sacred objects

      Because the life span even of saints is limited, most of the miracles attributed to them occur through their inanimate remains at their tombs or through their relics (relic). These relics may be parts of their bodies—often deliberately dismembered for wider distribution, so that a bone may be in one place, a hair in another, and the heart someplace else—or objects or parts of objects associated with their lives (e.g., the shroud of Christ or fragments of the True Cross).

      Not all miracle-working objects of veneration are relics. Statues and icons can work miracles, and in many Christian countries images and icons of the Virgin Mary are especially famed for their miraculous virtues. In the Christian Middle Ages the veneration of the sacrament of the Eucharist brought about a proliferation of miracles. Here, as in the case of images, a distinction can be made between the magical character of folk beliefs and the diverse theological doctrines concerning these religious objects; only rarely have religious authorities opposed the cult of saints, images, and relics and the concomitant belief in miracles—an exception is classical Protestantism, which in the 16th century rejected such cults.

      Although they are not strictly sources of miracles, talismans and amulets (amulet)—i.e., objects believed to possess magical virtues such as good luck or protection of the bearer or owner from all kinds of danger—should be mentioned in this connection. They are found in diverse forms and sizes and in all kinds of material.

Sacred places

      Miracles are often connected with special sacred places. Normally these are natural shrines, such as sacred groves, or temples and sanctuaries in which a god or spirit lives or has manifested himself or in which his statue, symbol, holy objects, or relics are enshrined. Holy places, such as Mecca and the Kaʿbah in Islām or the Buddhist stupas (stupa), are centres of pilgrimages and veneration because of their religious significance and the religious values that they symbolize and not necessarily because miracles are wrought there; yet, popular devotion associates miracles with many of these holy sites.

Miracles in the religions of the world

      It has already been suggested that the mythologies of primitive and ancient religions should not be designated miraculous insofar as they deal with mythical origins and ages; frequently they attempt to explain how certain regularities and what is now considered the normal course of things have come into being. The crucial distinction lies between religion on the popular primitive level and the more highly developed forms of religious belief. The tendency of the former is to relate to a concrete, magical presence of the sacred and to envisage the possibility of using this presence for the achievement of such desired ends as healing, blessing, or success in an undertaking. The higher forms of religion—though recognizing miracles or even demanding dogmatic affirmation of belief in them—exhibit a far more differentiated and complex attitude.

       Hellenistic religion presents one of the best examples of a civilization in which miracles play a major part. The intervention of the gods in the affairs of the Homeric heroes takes place in a cosmos in which the divine and human spheres still interact. Later Hellenistic syncretism conceived of the sublunar world as a distinct sphere, though higher powers could miraculously irrupt into it. Miraculous cures (e.g., at the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus), divine manifestations of various kinds (e.g., voices, dreams, and theophanies), and even virgin births and resurrections were widely reported.

Religions of the East

      In the great religions of the East the belief in miracles is closely connected with the theory that ascetic practices and the knowledge of mystical formulas, such as the Sanskrit mantras, can give the practitioner unlimited magical powers.

Religions of India

      India has become the classic land of wonders not because of the accounts of fantastic actions of divine beings or semidivine heroes and avatars (incarnations of Hindu gods) related in Indian mythology but because both popular religion and philosophical theory set no bounds to the magical powers that can be attained by great ascetics and yogis (adherents of Yoga, the Hindu (Hinduism) philosophy teaching the suppression of all activity of mind, body, and will in order that the self may realize its distinction from them and attain liberation). Even if these magical powers are considered insignificant in higher religion and spiritually negligible, their reality is never doubted. The Upaniṣad and the Brāhmaṇa—ancient Sanskrit writings of the Vedic period—may consider the heights of religious insight and mystical experience as man's supreme aim, but neither the later classical sources nor contemporary Hindu belief ever question the miraculous powers of a holy man. The same attitude is shared by the other religions of Indian origin: Jainism and Buddhism.

      The Buddha himself refused to spread his teaching by impressing his audience with miracles. According to the Aṅguttara Nikāya, one of the collections of the Buddha's sayings, there are three kinds of miracles—the miracle of magic, the miracle of thought reading, and the miracle of instruction—and of these the last is the most wonderful and excellent, whereas the other two are not much better than a conjuror's tricks. Yet the same text also describes what is implied by the miracle of magic: (magic) “there is one who, . . . having been one becomes many, . . . appears and vanishes, unhindered he goes through walls. . . . He dives in and out of the earth as if it were water. Without sinking he walks on water as if on earth. Seated cross-legged he travels through the sky like a winged bird. With his hand he touches and strokes the sun and the moon. . . .” The same text also asserts that not only was Gautama endowed with these powers but so also were hundreds of monks of his order.

Religions of China

      In China, although Confucianism in the strict sense has little room for miraculous elements, Taoism (Daoism) has produced a rich crop of thaumaturgy and magic on all levels of folk religion. No doubt the teaching of the Tao (literally, the Way) can be interpreted in terms of a sublime moral and perhaps even mystical doctrine. In actual fact it was one of the main sources of Chinese magic in all its forms, including the quest for the elixir of life. Religious Taoism, with its theory of a balance and interaction of cosmic forces, lent itself to elaboration and expression on all levels—from philosophy to pseudo-science to magic.

Religions of the West

      In Western monotheistic (monotheism) religions it is necessary to distinguish between the role of miracles on the level of popular beliefs and practices and the theory of miracles propounded by the theologians. Belief in a personal, omnipotent Creator who exercises his providence over his creatures implies a concept of miracles as deliberate interventions in the course of events by the same sovereign God who also assures their normal regularity.

Judaism

      Miracles are taken for granted throughout the Old Testament. God does “wondrous things” according to Psalms, chapter 72, and “great things and unsearchable, marvellous things without number” according to the Book of Job, chapter 5; these things are done in his creation in general and in the history of his people in particular (e.g., the 10 plagues of Egypt and the events of the Exodus). A list of the great wonders done by God is given in Psalms, chapter 136; their purpose is to make his creatures praise him, acknowledge his rule, and “know that I am the Lord.” God's wondrous deeds range from the normal regularities of creation to extraordinary interventions that run counter to ordinary experience and thus serve as signs of his greatness and providence in wreaking vengeance on the wicked and giving salvation to his elect.

      Later rabbinic Judaism took the occurrence of miracles for granted. It assumed a natural order in which things worked and within which humans were supposed to discharge their duties; thus, to rely on miracles was nothing short of sinful. In special circumstances, however, or in connection with persons of extraordinary saintliness, God would intervene or spectacularly answer their petitionary prayers. It was not so much a matter of suspending as of relativizing nature, the normal course of which was just one possible expression of the divine will. It was only in the Middle Ages and under the influence of Greco-Arabic philosophy that the problem of miracles was systematically discussed on a philosophical and theological level. Normative, rabbinic Judaism, being mainly concerned with doing God's will as revealed in his Law, had little interest in miracles, though it accepted, as a matter of course, the veracity of the miracles recorded in Scripture and in the Talmud (the collection of Jewish lore, legend, and law). On the level of popular piety both magic and the belief in miracles always flourished, especially under the influence of Kabbala, the esoteric, mystical movement within Judaism; the Ḥasidic movement (a pietist movement that arose in eastern Europe in the 18th century) in particular produced a rich crop of beliefs and legends concerning the miraculous virtue—through prayer, intercession, or magical power—of the great Ḥasidic saints and rabbis.

Christianity

       New Testament accounts of the advent, birth, life, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ include many miracles. Jesus (Jesus Christ) is reported in the Gospels to have performed miracles of diverse kinds: raising the dead, healing the sick, casting out demons, and causing nature miracles, such as the multiplication of loaves and the turning of water into wine at the town of Cana. Unlike the Buddha and Muḥammad, Jesus had an ambiguous attitude toward miracles: on the one hand he performed them as a sign of his mission and of the impending coming of the Kingdom; on the other hand he reproved the desire for wonders and repeatedly forbade the disciples to publicize his miracles, insisting that it was faith alone that worked miracles. In fact, because miracles also could be explained by attributing them to demonic agency, it was ultimately faith that determined the quality and function of the miracle.

      Early Christianity developed in the atmosphere of Hellenistic, Greco-Roman culture, which was full of miraculous accounts and legends. These no doubt influenced Christian traditions and forms of devotion, especially as popular religion always hankered after miracles, and—at the conclusion of the Gospel According to Mark—Christ himself had promised the continuance of miracles in his church. In a world in which only a few critical minds doubted the reality of miracles, the similarity of the Christian signs to those reported in pagan legend was attributed to demonic imitation and counterfeit. The problem of distinguishing between the two sources of miracles—because the devil often disguises himself as an angel of light—frequently solicited the attention of theologians and mystics. Whereas for the theologians a miracle was a sign of God's saving presence and design, for the mass of believers it was the manifestation of a sacred power inherent in individual persons, places, and objects.

      Medieval theologians—and specifically St. Thomas Aquinas (Thomism)—taught that as all knowledge was derived from sensible facts, so also “a certain degree of supernatural knowledge of the objects of faith” could be brought about “by certain supernatural effects that are called miracles.” This doctrine already assumes a system of natural causality that God—though he normally works through the natural law of which he is the author and Creator—can temporarily set aside. It also assumes that—at least in theory, if not always in practice—natural and supernatural effects can be distinguished. Thus, in 1870 the first Vatican Council (Vatican Council, First) declared: “If anyone should say that no miracles can be performed, . . . or that they can never be known with certainty, or that by them the divine origin of the Christian religion cannot be rightly proved—let him be anathema.” Belief in miracles is thus obligatory in the Roman Catholic Church (Roman Catholicism), although belief in any specific miracle is not necessarily so. Classical Protestantism, however, has confined its belief in miracles to those recorded in Scripture.

Islām

      Muslim religion assumes, as a matter of course, that Allāh works miracles and has done so in the past; e.g., through Moses, Solomon, and Jesus but significantly not through the Prophet Muḥammad (Muhammad). According to the Qurʾān, Muḥammad explicitly rejected the idea of proving his vocation by signs and miracles: the Qurʾān itself was the greatest miracle, and he was but a human messenger and preacher of repentance. Nevertheless, subsequent narratives invested his birth and life with superlatively miraculous details.

      Muslim popular religion—particularly under Ṣūfī (Ṣūfism) (Islāmic mysticism) influence—abounds in miracles, pilgrimages to the tombs of wonder-working saints, and the like. Dogmatic theology, too, recognizes miracles as facts. The peculiar feature of Muslim theology is that, unlike Christian theology, it did not accept the idea of nature as an entity operating according to fixed laws ordained by the Creator. Because the universe is constantly being re-created by Allāh in successive time atoms, natural regularity is nothing but the regularity of Allāh's habit in re-creating the universe. Thus, a miracle is the omnipotent God's departure from his habit but no different, in principle, from the latter. Muslim dogmatics distinguish between miracles (karāmāt), with which Allāh surrounds his saints (awliyāʾ) as a mark of distinction, and signs (āyāt, also muʿjizāt; literally, “acts of an overwhelming nature”). The latter are wrought by Allāh to prove the genuineness of his messengers and to overwhelm and reduce to silence their opponents. Such miracles, which deviate from the usual course of things and are of such nature that others cannot produce their like, are Allāh's testimony to the sincerity of his apostles. The problem is nevertheless complicated by the fact that Satan too can perform miracles. Generally speaking, miracles do not play a role in the continued life of orthodox Islām, though they loom large in popular belief and piety.

Interpretation of miracles

      All the more fully developed theologies have formulated a doctrine of miracles in the context of their beliefs regarding God, the world, the operations of nature (nature, philosophy of), and causality. The emergence of the concept of nature as a closed system functioning in accordance with strict causal laws created problems more than once, but medieval Christian and Jewish thought had no difficulty in maintaining that the order created by God could also be suspended by him.

In classical antiquity

      Miracles were denied even in classical antiquity. Thus, Cicero (Cicero, Marcus Tullius) asserted that “nothing happens without a cause (causation), and nothing happens unless it can happen. When that which can happen does in fact happen, it cannot be considered a miracle. Hence, there are no miracles.” Cicero qualified this statement, however, by saying that miracle stories may be necessary for the piety of ignorant folk. The 2nd-century pagan philosopher Celsus is less dogmatic in his attacks on Christianity: the Christian miracles are insufficiently attested and most improbable, but, even if they were genuine, they could hardly offset the miracles of the pagan world—e.g., the healings of Asclepius. This was the standard pattern of many religious polemics: miracles as such were not necessarily denied; only those claimed by the adversary were denied. When these could not be denied, they were ascribed to diabolic agency or to the fraudulent practices of priests or occasionally to a misinterpretation of essentially natural phenomena.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries

      Rationalist (Rationalism) criticism, although not completely absent in the Middle Ages, became a major factor in the 18th and 19th centuries. David Hume (Hume, David), a British empiricist and a skeptic, in the chapter “On Miracles” in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding argued that, given the general experience of the uniformity of nature, miracles were highly improbable and that the evidence in their favour was far from convincing. It should be emphasized that Hume, whose criticism led him to a denial of causality, did not dismiss miracles because they were inconsistent with causal law—as many other thinkers did, notably the Deists (Deism) (those, especially British, who advocated a natural religion). Instead Hume insisted on the probability factor and thus on the importance of assessing historical evidence. Because all Christians agreed that biblical religion and the scheme of salvation set forth in it could be maintained only by stressing prophecy and miracle, there developed a vast body of literature, especially among Protestants, proving the authenticity of the Christian faith on the basis of the miracles recorded in the Bible. For many 18th-century thinkers, however, the vastness and complexity of the order of nature were even more impressive than any alleged exceptions to it. Thus, belief in miracles, although remaining an essential element of faith to good Christians, appeared as sheer superstition to the eyes of the torchbearers of Rationalist enlightenment.

      Criticism of the concept of miracle was articulated in more than one way. There was philosophical and scientific criticism to the effect that miracles were impossible and that even epistemologically (i.e., within the limits of knowledge) the occurrence of a miracle could never be established; at most, these critics maintained, there were merely as yet unexplained natural phenomena. (This view comes close to the religious assertion that faith precedes the experience of a miracle and that the factuality of a miracle can never precede faith.) There was historical and philological criticism, arguing that the actual occurrence of miracles is unsubstantiated and analyzing the growth and evolution of the legends and texts reporting miracles. There was psychological criticism, arguing that some people want to believe in miracles and so produce imaginative creations answering their psychological needs. There was also a type of religious criticism implying that the truly spiritual has no need of miraculous supports. One suggested solution to the problem was the assertion that the term miracle does not describe an objective event but rather a subjective mode of experience. This view of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Schleiermacher, Friedrich), an early-19th-century Protestant theologian and philosopher, identified miracle with a religious understanding of any aspect of the world.

In the late 19th and 20th centuries

      Later 19th- and 20th-century liberal Protestant thinkers, such as Rudolf Bultmann (Bultmann, Rudolf), a German New Testament scholar, discarded the traditional notion of miracle together with other elements of what they termed the mythological apparatus of the Bible. Many of these liberal theologians sought evidence for Christianity in the moral and religious transformation it brought to people's lives or interpreted the doctrine of salvation in Existential terms. The early decades of the 20th century, however, also witnessed a return to a more orthodox theological climate—as, for example, in the thought of Karl Barth (Barth, Karl), a Swiss Protestant (Protestantism) theologian—and a new readiness to accept miracles as meaningful signs of God's salvific activity. This change of climate coincided with certain developments in science that appeared to question a too rigid and mechanical concept of causal determinism.

      Orthodox Jews, Christians, and Muslims still believe in the literal occurrence of the miracles recorded in their scriptures and traditions; Roman Catholics, furthermore, believe in the continued occurrence of miracles, defining them as a direct divine effect upon nature. The liberal attitude—whatever the variations in detail and in sophistication of the explanation—is essentially similar to that propounded by Schleiermacher.

R.J. Zwi Werblowsky Ed.

Additional Reading

Gustav Mensching, Das Wunder im Glauben und Aberglauben der Völker (1957), the best and most complete treatment of the subject; Robert M. Grant, Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought (1952), a description of Hellenistic attitudes and beliefs. Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Events, 1000–1215 (1982), a study of the attitudes toward reports of miracles by the church and by other institutions.

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