Miracles & Natural Law

“Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” — Exodus 15:11

From the parting of the Red Sea to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Scripture testifies that God acts within His creation in powerful, extraordinary ways. These mighty deeds — miracles — are not embarrassments to be explained away but revelations of who God is: sovereign over all things, faithful to His promises, and actively at work in the world He made.

The Biblical Vocabulary of Miracles

The Bible uses a rich vocabulary to describe God’s extraordinary acts, each word illuminating a different aspect:

Hebrew terms:

• Mopheth (מוֹפֵת) — “wonder, portent, marvel” — emphasizing the awe-inspiring nature of the event
• Oth (אוֹת) — “sign” — emphasizing that the event points beyond itself to a truth about God
• Niphlaoth (נִפְלָאוֹת) — “wonderful deeds” — from pala (פָּלָא), “to be extraordinary, surpassing”

Greek terms:

• Dynamis (δύναμις) — “power, mighty work” — emphasizing the divine power behind the event
• Semeion (σημεῖον) — “sign” — emphasizing its revelatory purpose (John especially uses this term)
• Teras (τέρας) — “wonder, prodigy” — emphasizing the astonishment it produces

These terms often appear together (Acts 2:22: “mighty works and wonders and signs”), showing that biblical miracles are simultaneously displays of power, vehicles of meaning, and occasions of wonder.

God and Natural Law

A common misunderstanding frames miracles as “violations” of natural law, as if God were breaking His own rules. But this rests on a flawed premise. Natural laws are human descriptions of the regular patterns by which God sustains the universe. God is not subject to these patterns — He is their author:

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” — Colossians 1:17

“He upholds the universe by the word of his power.” — Hebrews 1:3

The regularity of nature is itself a manifestation of God’s faithfulness. When God acts in extraordinary ways, He is not violating the natural order but exercising His sovereign freedom as the one who established and sustains that order. C.S. Lewis put it memorably: “If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter, He has created a new situation at that point. Nature’s laws at once take over… The miraculous does not break the laws of nature.”

Key Biblical Miracles

Scripture records miracles at pivotal moments in redemptive history:

• Creation itself — The greatest miracle: God calling all things into existence from nothing (Genesis 1; Hebrews 11:3)
• The Exodus — The plagues, the parting of the sea, manna in the wilderness — God delivering His people with “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 5:15)
• The Incarnation — God the Son taking on human nature, born of the Virgin Mary (John 1:14; Luke 1:35)
• The Resurrection — Christ’s bodily rising from the dead, the central miracle and vindication of all Christian faith (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17)

The Resurrection: The Central Miracle

The apostle Paul staked everything on the resurrection:

“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” — 1 Corinthians 15:17

The resurrection is not a parable or a metaphor. It is a claim about what happened in real history — that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth was raised bodily from the dead on the third day. The evidence includes the empty tomb, the multiple post-resurrection appearances to individuals and groups (including over five hundred at once, per 1 Corinthians 15:6), and the radical transformation of the disciples from fearful fugitives into bold proclaimers willing to die for their testimony.

Responding to Hume’s Objection

The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) argued that the evidence for miracles could never outweigh the evidence for the regularity of natural law. His argument, however, contains a crucial flaw: it assumes that uniform human experience testifies against miracles — but this is precisely the point at issue. If God exists and is free to act, then the prior probability of miracles is not negligible. Hume’s argument works only if one has already assumed that naturalism is true.

Moreover, the question is not whether miracles happen regularly but whether they have happened at all. The evidence must be weighed on its own terms — and in the case of the resurrection, the historical evidence is formidable.

Miracles and the Character of God

Biblical miracles are never arbitrary displays of raw power. They are purposeful acts that reveal God’s character:

• His compassion — Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, raised the dead
• His sovereignty — He commands the wind, the waves, and the forces of nature
• His faithfulness — Miracles confirm His covenant promises and authenticate His messengers
• His redemptive purpose — The great miracles of Scripture advance the story of salvation, from creation to resurrection to the coming new creation

As Augustine argued in The City of God (XXI.8), miracles are not contrary to nature but contrary to what we know of nature — for God, the author of all natures, does nothing contrary to Himself. For how faith and reason relate to the evidence for miracles, see the companion article.

“Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.” — Acts 2:22