In this article in (1982) 13 International Journal of Philosophy of Religion 103 Ian Walker considers Hume’s definition of a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature.
As part of this process, Walker expands out this definition, stressing that the violation needs to be non-repeatable as repetition would accord it some degree of regularity, and thus the possibility of according with the laws of nature. I’ve obviously been a legal academic far too long, as this instantly reminds me of constitutional conventions – violate them once and you may face a constitutional crisis; violate them often enough and they cease to be a constitutional convention.
The difficulty with claims of miracles, or have I have described them elsewhere, exceptional claims, is that the very framework by which we decide how to evalute them itself depends on assumptions which the miraculous cast into doubt – assumptions which legal actors are very likely to find more comfortable than the possibility of non-repeatable violations of the laws of nature. As CS Lewis put it:
“If immediate experience cannot prove or disprove the miraculous, still less can history do so. Many people think one can decide whether a miracle occurred in the past by examining the evidence ‘according to the ordinary rules of historical inquiry’. But the ordinary rules cannot be worked until we have decided whether miracles are possible, and if so, how probable they are. For if they are impossible, then no amount of historical evidence will convince us. If they are possible but immensely improbable, then only mathematically demonstrative evidence will convince us; and since history never provides that degree of evidence for any event, history can never convince us that a miracle occurred. If, on the other hand, miracles are not intrinsically improbable, then the existing evidence will be sufficient to convince us that quite a number of miracles have occurred.”
A party in a legal action sincerely seeking to rely upon the miraculous in their case may wish to reflect on the working out of this conundrum in Duncan [1944] 1 KB 773, in the Court of Appeal. Their legal advisor may want to unwind with the excellent Hellish Nell: Last of Britain’s Witches by M Gaskill.
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