Miracles and inspiration

I say here my opinions about miracles and about that which I call inspiration.

0. Contents

1. Miracles
1.1. Explanation of the definition
1.2. Propositions
2. Inspiration
2.1. Explanation of the definition
2.2. Propositions

1. Miracles

I define a miracle as an appearance which communicates through means which no human agent could control with his natural powers.

1.1. Explanation of the definition

First, a miracle is an appearance, i.e., something perceived by the senses.

Second, a miracle communicates, i.e., it is understood as an act of communication by a rational agent, or as part of such an act.

Third, the means, through which a miracle communicates, are such as could not be controlled by any human agent with his natural powers. For an explanation of human agents, see my anthropology; I will explain natural powers next.

In the phrase natural powers, natural is not to be contrasted with artificial. Since technology is operated by the use of faculties which belong to a human being by nature, the effects which he produces by the use of technology are always within the scope of his natural powers.

Rather, natural is to be contrasted with accidental. A miracle is not necessarily beyond the powers which may belong to a human being in virtue of his particular circumstances rather than his nature, which may be called his accidental powers.

Example of accidental power

A non-miraculous example of accidental power is what would happen if my three-year-old son asked me to produce a sibling for him, and I were moved by his request, talked it over with my wife, and complied.

In this case, my son produced a sibling by his accidental power. Producing a sibling is beyond his natural power, since he has not been through puberty yet. Since it was not beyond the power of any human agent, this was not a miracle; but it remains that he was able to cause a sibling to be produced by means of powers which he does not have from his nature, but rather from his accidental influence over his father.

Whatever my son does with the help of technology is within the scope of his natural powers, since it is by his nature as a three-year-old that he is able to use such-and-such tools. But his power to get me to comply with his request does not come from the faculties which he has in virtue of being a three-year-old human being – indeed, no other three-year-old could get me to comply. Rather, his power over me comes from the accidental circumstance that he is my son, and I am his father, which makes me have a special love for him – and that I happened to be the kind of person who would be moved by such a request.

Examples of miracles

In Exodus 4, Moses was given a special power by God. Whenever he wanted, Moses was now able to put his hand inside his cloak, and take it out covered in leprosy; and he could repeat the procedure to instantly cure his hand and make it healthy again. Moses was told to do this in front of the Egyptians, as a sign of God’s power.

The leprous hand trick was clearly a sensible appearance, and it was part of Moses’s communication with the Egyptians, so it fits the first two conditions.

And we see that, since Moses could choose the time and place in which he would do the leprous hand trick, the effect was within the power of his will, in a certain sense – but it was not within the scope of the powers which he had in virtue of his nature as a human being, which is why no one else could do it.

Later, in Exodus 7, the Pharaoh’s sorcerers were, in fact, able to use their magic arts to reproduce some of Moses’s other marvels. However, since Moses worked his wonders without using their magic arts as means, it remains that only Moses’s wonders were in fact miraculous in the technical sense defined here; it was beyond the natural power of any human agent to do what Moses did through the method that he used to do it. Pharaoh’s sorcerers, by contrast, were using arts which any human being could learn.

Though the sorcerers’ magic arts were, indeed, accidental to them, and in this sense beyond their natural powers, nevertheless their arts required only their natural human powers to be learned. No human being could, with only his natural powers, gain control of the means that Moses used, which is what is important for the definition here stated.

1.2. Propositions

Given the foregoing understanding of miracles, I explain them further in four propositions, which are expounded upon.

Proposition 1 — Miracles are not necessarily a violation, or suspension, of the laws of nature.

For the definition of miracles given here, it does not matter at all whether they happen in accordance with the ordinary course of nature or not. If Moses had, by means beyond his natural powers, actually simply been given a cloak which had a potent rapid-spreading leprosy germ under one side of it, and a potent antidote under the other, this would not detract from the miraculous nature of the event.

Proposition 2 — Miracles are not necessarily unexplainable, or unpredictable, in terms of natural causes.

For example, suppose that we had the power to perfectly predict and explain the causes of the fall of meteors, and then it happened that a collection of meteors fell upon the earth in a way that formed a legible message in English capital letters.

This message, which would certainly be understood as a communication, would be a miracle in the sense defined here, since it communicates by means beyond the natural power of any human agent, although no part of it would be unexplainable in terms of such things as gravity, or the original positions of stars, etc.

Proposition 3 — Miracles may be assigned to any rational agent which is believed to have the power to produce them.

Miracles involve communication by non-human rational agents, although the message communicated may be the message of a mere human, as would happen if God had allowed Moses to do the leprous hand trick in support of any random message he may have wanted to emphasize.

So, they may raise questions about the nature or identity of the non-human agent involved.

In the context of the Exodus story, the miracles were rightly assigned to the power of the God of Israel, since those miracles were part of communications which Moses was advancing on His behalf. (“The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you with the message...” – 7:15)

However, nothing about the definition of miracles given here prevents their marvellous production being understood as the action of any non-human rational agent which is thought to be capable of affecting the relevant media.

So, supposing that there are such things as angels, demons, fairies, and ghosts, and that these entities have superhuman powers, then it may be right to assign some miracles to them, if someone experiences the miracles and has reason to do so.

Proposition 4 — Belief in miracles is permitted by reason.

In many cases, it is very right to suspect that the means by which the appearance was produced were, in fact, within the natural control of some human being; especially if he stands to benefit if the miracle is believed. But there is no reason to suppose that such a suspicion should prevent belief in all, or even most, alleged miracles. Most objections to miracles depend upon definitions of them which explicitly exclude the Propositions 1 and 2 given here.

2. Inspiration

I define inspiration as a miracle which is observed in a human being’s imaginative faculty.

2.1. Explanation of the definition

Inspiration is a particular kind of miracle, where the appearances observed are perceived through the imagination rather than the external senses.

This is meant to cover a broad range of unusual psychological phenomena. I believe that the inspiration of poets by muses, the inspiration of prophets by God, and the visions of mystics, supposing that such things truly happen, are all examples of this same phenomenon which I call inspiration.

Really, it is hard to draw an essential line between these alleged events. It happens that poets, unlike the other two, do not tend to claim that their inspiration is from a holy source, and that religious mystics, unlike prophets, have not had their writings accepted into the biblical canon. The event, in each case, is allegedly the influence of an extraordinary mind upon the imagination.

2.2. Propositions

Given the foregoing understanding of inspiration, I explain it further in three propositions, which are expounded upon.

Proposition 5 — Belief in inspiration is permitted by reason.

If someone sees something appear in his imagination in a way which was certainly out of his control, and if this appearance gives him reason to interpret it as an act of communication, then he may rationally believe that it was an instance of inspiration, and others may believe him when told about it.

Proposition 6 — Belief in contemporary inspiration is not forbidden by the Catholic faith.

Although the Catholic faith requires that no prophecy be accepted as public revelation anymore, – cf. the Syllabus of Errors, #21 – nevertheless mystical visions may be accepted as genuine, which is much the same. Even the inspiration of poets by muses may be accepted, if the muses are interpreted to be a kind of angels.

Proposition 7 — The temperament best suited to inspiration is opposed to the temperament best suited to philosophy and geometry.

If God chooses a man to be a prophet, he can simply change his temperament, so that the initial suitability of his natural disposition is irrelevant. But supposing that inspiration ever happens through means other than direct divine action, it must happen in persons with vivid and powerful imaginations.

Since imagination, like the other senses, is an enemy to reason, we see that the persons with the strongest imaginations are the persons least fitted for abstract reasoning – as Pascal noticed, the esprit de géométrie and the esprit de finesse are characterized by opposed habits, and very seldom united in one person. (An analogous observation in modern times is the humorous division of persons into wordcels and shape rotators, characterized by verbal and visuospatial IQ respectively.)