Miracle and Magic

As you may well suppose, my friends, following Chesterton I believe both in the miraculous and in the magical, but it has recently come to my attention that these must be distinguished. For the miraculous has a precise theological meaning, while magic does not. The magic of which I speak must also be severed from any sort of sorcery, thaumaturgy, witchcraft, fraudulence, and so forth. Those things are not magical. They are sorcery, thaumaturgy, witchcraft, fraudulence, and so forth. It was miraculous when Jesus rose from the dead. It was not miraculous that the sun rose that day, but it was magical. Similarly, it is not at all miraculous that there were green things growing in the garden, but it is magical that they were green and growing.

So what is a miracle? David Hume tried to argue that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and that the laws of nature are grounded in our experience of what always happens. The regular rising and setting of the sun, for example, is explicable by such laws. From this definition of miracle, however, Hume tried to argue that belief in the miraculous is inherently unjustified, stating that the only way belief in the report of any miracle can be justified is when the miracle's not occurring is more implausible than the miracle itself. As a violation of the laws of nature, for Hume a violation of all experience, this could never be, so no testimony of the miraculous is ever trustworthy. Generally speaking, attacks aim for Hume's definition of miracle, which turns out to be quite poor, in addition to the fact that his entire scheme depends on an empiricist epistemology.

It seems a far more agreeable and general definition would be that of an event that is a sign from God. For miracles always occur to communicate something to those experiencing it. The Gospel of John, for example, records seven miracles from the ministry of Jesus: the transformation of water into wine at Cana in Galilee, healing the royal official's son, healing the lame man at Bethesda, feeding the five thousand at Galilee, walking on water, healing the man blind from birth, and raising Lazarus from the dead. Why were any of these carried out? It can only be that they legitimized the person of Jesus, so as to inculcate belief. Jesus himself says, when approached by the royal official, "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders...you will never believe" (John 4.48). Thus they were given signs and wonders, that they themselves might bear witness to what they have seen and what they have heard.

Even the miracles of the Torah and elsewhere in the Old Testament can be explained in this way. Why should God apporach Moses through a burning bush but to legitimize himself with this strange sign? Furthermore, when Moses' staff becomes a snake, is he not told, "This...is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers--the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob--has appeared to you" (Exodus 4.5), and are the signs of his leprous hand and the water to blood not merely intended to reinforce the first sign? Indeed, miraculous events come to prove a point, and generally, as in both the times immediately surrounding both Jesus and Moses, they tend to come in number.

Now we come to magic. What makes the sunrise or the greeness of growing things magical? The magic is in what might not have been. For an empiricist like Hume, everything is as it is on the authority of natural law. There is no room for supposing things might have been different. There is no will in natural law. For the believer in magic, there is such a will: the Word of God through whom all things that have been made were made. It is no stretch to suppose that green and growing things might have been willed otherwise, say blue. Just as easily, they might have been made ugly or not at all, but these things are not so. On the contrary, green and growing things are green because of choice, and they are beautiful in reflection of the magician that makes them. Just as the sun rises by magic--a miracle might be if the sun did not rise one morning--by that same magic trees branch out bearing leaves and fruit. They might as well have borne birds, though, but it is not so. Trees as they are might not have been, and they also happen to be good, and in this we can get a faint glimpse of the good magician, and we might do well to wonder what magic awaits us in what not yet is.

At last we come to a point, which was our destination at the start. In both the magical and the miraculous, God is telling us something, but these are two very different means. Magic is ever present in the air, but barrages of miracles are few and far between. It seems appropriate to conclude with what Paul had to say to the Romans about magic, "for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1.20). Magic, however, is not to be taken by itself, for Paul goes on to tell how men made idols of magical things, such as reptiles, and this is bad. Turn ye therefore to the Magician, and be filled with wonder.

Again I acknowledge my debt to G.K. Chesterton for providing me with almost everything I said. Also Ken, Ben, and Todd.