Miracles

Following from David Hume's argument against miracles, the principle of "analogy" came to dominate biblical scholarship: because miracles don't happen today, we can infer, by analogy, that healings and miracles in the Bible also never happened. As a result, alternative explanations were sought for why biblical texts reported experiences, which the critics believed never happened. Today, however, an increasing number of scholars recognize that the principle of analogy works better in the opposite direction: overwhelming evidence shows that healings and miracles similar to those performed by Jesus and his disciples are happening today. Therefore, by analogy, we have no reason to dismiss the miracle accounts recorded in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. The cumulative evidence demands a paradigm shift away from naïve skepticism about miracles to their critical exploration.

Written by Greg Keener