The Concept of Miracles

1300 words, 6 minute read

Like most children of the Enlightenment, I have struggled with the concept of Miracles: “They’re not reasonable, they’re illogical, irrational, and unscientific; they cannot be replicated and therefore they cannot be verified.” 

Duh! They’re called ‘miracles’ for a reason! We’re not talking about a package of Twinkies here…are we? But I digress. I still could not comfortably accommodate ‘miracles’ in my overly rationalistic theology, until I realized…

“Miracles are reasonable, logical, rational, scientific, infinitely repeatable and therefore auto-verified.” 

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As an historical document, the Bible begins with Exodus. Genesis is important, but it stands outside, and above, the rest of the Torah. It provides the mythological, cosmological, theological, and anthropological context for everything that follows. But Biblical History per se starts with Jacob & Co entering Egypt (Exodus 1: 1-5). 

From there, it’s not long before we find ourselves in need of a miracle. The Egyptians initially welcomed the Hebrew refugees but over time the welcome turned to exploitation. (At least that could never happen today…could it?) 

YHWH caught ‘sight and sound’ of these infernal goings on. According to Scripture, he declared “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt…” (Exodus 3: 7) but I imagine his inner dialog might have continued along these lines:

“…Best set things right. But that’s a problem, isn’t it? I ‘created’ the Heavens and the Earth; I didn’t just imagine them. So they’re free to evolve as they see fit…and that means no interference from moi.”

God is the paradigmatic exemplification of Natural Law, not an exception to it. God, it seems, is subject to something resembling Star Trek’s Prime Directive. Interference in the local, natural order of things is forbidden.

“Still, enough is enough! This evil is intolerable. So what’s to do?” 

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Et voila! “It’s a miracle!” YHWH appears to Moses in the form of a burning bush. Now an ordinary bush, when it burns, leaves a mark in nature. Heat is generated, and smoke. A remnant of ashes is left on the ground, and there’s no more bush left to burn: one and done. (And of course, tornadoes devastate Chicago - the Butterfly Effect.)

There’s a common name for all these consequences: “Entropy” – the inexorable increase of disorder. But Moses’ burning bush is special: it does not generate entropy! Therefore, it does not ‘happen’ at all, at least not in any ‘ordinary’ sense. 

It leaves no record of itself…and yet it diverts the course of history. How so? It is not the burning bush that changes the world; it is the free response of Moses, et al., i.e. you and me! It is we who make manifest the miraculous universally latent in the mundane.

Question: Would a miracle be a miracle if no one responded to it? What if the bush burned but Moses ignored it? No heat, no smoke, no ashes, no Exodus, no ‘event’, no burning bush! 

This is not to say that the miraculous is in the eye of the beholder. A miracle is as objectively real as any other event. It just takes an ‘eye’ to perceive it. The miraculous is everywhere, patiently waiting for some ‘existential hero’ (i.e. sentient being) to uncover (aletheia) it and respond. The miraculous is baked into the topology of Being itself.

Applying Gregory Bateson’s signature meme, Being is ‘a difference that makes a difference’. A miracle is certainly different, by definition; and it certainly makes a difference (e.g. the Exodus). Therefore, it is - but it does not happen (as defined by the Second Law of Thermodynamics). 

Now of course the Exodus happened and it generated an incalculable amount of entropy. But according to our model, the fact that there was an Exodus is entropy neutral. After all, living in slavery can be just as entropic as escaping from it. Time advances, events happen, entropy increases. But the ‘shape of things to come’, the ‘subjective form’ of events (per Whitehead), is a function of the future, not the past. 

Events (present) shape themselves (they are causa sui and sui generis) in relentless pursuit of certain transcendent Values (future). The aim of an event is what gives it its content (quality); the cause of the ‘burning bush’ is Liberty.

The ‘lure’ of the future is not entropic; our response to that lure is. The ‘future’ is defined by the values it embodies, and valuation is order. Robert Frost’s desire to return home is not entropic; neither is his choice of a path. But the walk he takes to get there is another matter.

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Now of course, the synaptic activity involved in forming an intention is entropic, but the intention itself is not. Reductionists notwithstanding, an intention is not merely the sum of its associated neurological processes. 

‘God works in mysterious ways’ – I’ll say: He works backwards! That an event occurs is a function of causality, that it generates entropy is a function of thermodynamics, but which event (out of all possible events) occurs when and where it does is a function of teleology and is entropy neutral.

We are all, always, Robert Frost Life is a ‘walk in the woods’. Walking generates entropy, the mental processes associated with choosing a path are also entropic, but the preference of one path over all others is entropy neutral. A road is a road is a road…and ultimately all roads lead to ‘Rome’ (home).

Presumably, every human being alive today will die. At death, entropy = 1, order = 0. There is but one death and that one death is the common fate of all. According to the Greek poet, Simonides (c. 500 BCE), “Inescapable, death hangs over all alike, for an equal portion of it falls to the noble and the base…for all things come to a single dread Charybdis.”

Disorder is monotonous and monochrome: “There is nothing new under the Sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9); but order is evergreen. Value is the filter that reveals latent order and gives lived experience its novelty, intensity, and joy. Value uncovers the miraculous in the mundane.

Each lived life is totally unique. In fact, no two lives have even a single event in common (ergo the Other Minds problem). Each life unfolds behind its own event horizon. 

Everything is the same; everything is different. Everything is natural; everything is a miracle. Like Frost, our lives consist of a perpetual series of choices and choices within choices. Each time, the act of choosing is entropic but the choice is not. That there are events (quiddity) is entropic; the content of those events (quality) is not. 

To be is to be other than. Borrowing from Jacques Derrida, “Being is differance!” The quiddity of an event is causal…and entropic; the quality of that event is teleological, freely chosen, and entropy neutral. Therefore, every event is a ‘burning bush’, every event is a miracle! 

“That a man should eat and drink and enjoy himself in return for all his labors is a gift of God…Go to it then, eat your food and enjoy it, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart.” (Ecclesiastes 2:24, 9:7) After all, you’re living in the midst of the miraculous.

Still don’t believe in miracles?  No problem. You’re a nihilist. Be proud. But be sure you understand the implications of your choice. If there are no miracles, how do you account for the qualities of any event?

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El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind (c. 1560–67) shows Jesus restoring sight to a blind man amid a gathering of astonished onlookers, symbolizing both physical and spiritual illumination. The elongated figures and radiant colors heighten the sense of divine power breaking into ordinary life, reflecting faith’s transformative vision.