Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts

by Craig S. Keener

In sociological terms, antisupernaturalism supports itself circularly: our world construction shapes how we understand our experience, then we (like Hume) “make our experience normative for all experience,” and we allow no phenomena to challenge our construct.[113] Miracles may be viewed as unique events, but history, unlike science, is full of events that are unique in some respects.[114] Were historians to begin excluding unique or extremely unusual events, they would have to rule out much of history. Seeking to illustrate this point, in 1819 one scholar, parodying Hume, demonstrated that one could explain away a large measure of Napoleon’s life by this method.[115] Indeed, the first-century rise of a movement exalting Jesus as Lord within Judaism lacks prior analogy; yet no one denies that this movement began.[116]