Objections and Evidence of the Miracles of Jesus [Study]

The miracles attributed to Jesus of Nazareth have long occupied the center of theological, philosophical, and historical debate. Whether one considers the transformation of water into wine at Cana (John 2:1–11 ESV), the raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1–44 ESV), or the healings of the blind and the lame recorded in all four Gospels, these accounts constitute some of the most scrutinized claims in the history of Western thought. But did these events actually happen?

The very category of miracle raises profound questions: What is a miracle? Can such events occur within a law-governed universe? What counts as historical evidence for them? And how do different religious traditions understand the supernatural? This study examines objections to miracles and offers responses. It then reviews the historical evidence for miracles and the broad criteria used to assess their historicity. Finally, we briefly consider other worldviews and their approaches to miracles.

Outline

1.0 Challenges and Responses to the Miracles of Jesus

2.0 Historical Evidence for the Miracles of Jesus

3.0 Historical Criteria Applied to Miracles

4.0 The Concept of Miracles in Other Worldviews

1.0 Challenges and Responses to the Miracles of Jesus

1.1 The Humean Philosophical Challenge

The most influential philosophical challenge to the existence of miracles comes from the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. In his notable Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), Hume argued that a miracle is "a violation of the laws of nature" and that the uniform experience of humankind constitutes a standing proof against any miracle report. (1) Hume's argument is formally probabilistic: the evidence for the regularity of natural law will always outweigh the testimony of witnesses to a supposed miracle. He further argued that miracle reports cluster among ignorant and barbarous peoples, that competing religious traditions cancel one another's miracle claims, and that the natural human love of wonder amplifies credulity. The Humean tradition thus produces a methodological presumption against miracles that has shaped historical and scientific inquiry ever since.

Response to the Probability Argument

Contemporary philosophers of religion have subjected Hume's argument to sustained and devastating criticism. C. S. Lewis identified a fundamental circularity: Hume assumed that uniform experience speaks against miracles, but that assumption from the outset rules out any miracle, which is precisely the point at issue. (2) Norman Geisler has further argued that Hume's appeal to "uniform experience" is question-begging: it amounts to saying that miracles have not occurred because they have not occurred. (3)

More technically, philosophers such as Richard Swinburne and Alvin Plantinga have shown that Hume conflated the prior probability of miracles (which may be low) with their posterior probability given all the evidence, including specific testimony and background theological beliefs. If one has independent reason to believe in a God who acts in history, the prior probability of miracles rises substantially.

Similarly, William Lane Craig has pointed out that Bayes's theorem, properly applied, can favor the occurrence of a miracle when the background hypothesis of theism is admitted into the calculation, because the prior probability of a miracle-working God acting decisively at a particular point in history (such as the Incarnation) is not negligible once theism is granted. (4)

The late Antony Flew, himself a former champion of Humean atheism who became a theist late in life, conceded that Hume's argument fails as a knockdown proof against miracles. (5)

1.2 The Spinozistic Rationalist Objection

Preceding Hume by nearly a century, Benedict de Spinoza offered a rationalist metaphysical challenge. For Spinoza, God and nature are identical, and the laws of nature express divine necessity. To say that God performs a miracle is therefore to say that God acts contrary to God's own nature, a contradiction. Spinoza concluded that biblical accounts of miracles must be either metaphorical, misinterpretations of natural events, or pious fabrications. (6) While Spinoza's pantheism is not widely shared, his insistence that an immutable God cannot interrupt the natural order has influenced liberal theology and higher-critical approaches to Scripture.

Response to the Metaphysical Objection

The response to Spinoza and to broadly pantheistic objections is to challenge the metaphysical premise. Christian theism affirms a God who is ontologically distinct from the natural order. This Creator is not constrained by the laws he has instituted to govern created reality. Richard Swinburne defines a miracle as "an event of an extraordinary kind, brought about by a god, and of religious significance."(7) On this definition, a miracle is not an arbitrary violation of nature but a purposive act of the personal God, consistent with his character and redemptive intentions. There is no contradiction in affirming that a transcendent, personal God may act within the created order in ways not explicable by nature's ordinary regularities.

1.3 The Bultmannian Demythologization Program

In the twentieth century, Rudolf Bultmann (a German Lutheran theologian) mounted what is perhaps the most programmatic challenge to miracle accounts in the New Testament. Drawing on form criticism and writing from the perspective of Lutheran existentialist theology, Bultmann argued that the modern scientific worldview renders a literal belief in miracles intellectually untenable. "It is impossible," he famously wrote, "to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles."(8) Bultmann proposed demythologization: stripping away the New Testament's “mythological” shell to recover a proclamation that could be expressed in categories of authentic existence. Thus, he claims that Jesus's miracles are not historical events but symbolic expressions of encounters.

Response to Bultmann: The Recovery of Historical Intention

N. T. Wright has offered the most thorough historical response to Bultmann's program. Wright argues that Bultmann's demythologization rests on a false dichotomy between history and myth and on an outdated imposition of nineteenth-century existentialism onto first-century Jewish texts.(9) The Gospel miracle accounts are not mythological overlays on a kernel of existential truth; they are embedded in thoroughly Jewish apocalyptic and eschatological frameworks that interpret signs and wonders as inaugurating God's kingdom. To demythologize them is to distort their historical meaning beyond recognition. Instead, historians need to take the categories of the historical agents themselves, including their expectation of divine action, seriously.

Theologically, Karl Barth had already criticized Bultmann from within the German Protestant tradition, arguing that the existentialist reduction of the kerygma nullifies the objective, once-for-all character of God's saving acts in history. (10) The resurrection, Barth insisted, is not merely a symbol of the human possibility of authentic existence; it is an event in real space-time history on which the truth of the Christian proclamation depends.

1.4 The Historical-Critical Challenge

Academic historical criticism, rooted in the Enlightenment and formalized through the nineteenth-century German critical tradition, has posed a series of challenges within biblical scholarship. Scholars such as John P. Meier, though a theologian, have argued that applying rigorous historiographical criteria significantly reduces the number of miracle accounts that can be affirmed as historical. (11) Various explanations have been offered, including legendary embellishment, theological elaboration by the early church, and the influence of Hellenistic wonder-worker traditions, to account for the origin of miracle narratives without assuming actual supernatural events. Marcus Borg has argued that the miracle stories are best understood as parables in narrative form, communicating theological truths rather than historical occurrences. (12)

Response to Historical Criticism

Evangelical and moderate scholars have responded to historical-critical challenges by using the same methods and criteria, yet have reached different conclusions. John Meier himself concludes that Jesus almost certainly performed exorcisms and healings that his contemporaries, including his enemies, regarded as miraculous (13). Graham Twelftree argues that multiple independent attestations of Jesus's healing and exorcism activity across sources hostile to him (such as the rabbinic tradition, which spoke of his "sorcery") strengthen the case for historical authenticity (14). (See next section.) Craig Keener's massive two-volume study, Miracles, documents hundreds of contemporary accounts of miraculous healings from around the world, arguing that the modern dismissal of miracle testimony is not a neutral empirical judgment but a culturally narrow-minded one (15).

1.5 The Naturalistic-Scientific Challenge

A fifth category of challenges stems from the methodological commitments of modern natural science. The principle of methodological naturalism (the assumption that scientific explanation must invoke only natural causes) has, by some thinkers, been extended to metaphysical naturalism: the claim that no supernatural causes exist. On this view, what the Gospel writers reported as miracles must have had natural explanations that were not understood at the time. Proposed naturalistic explanations include psychosomatic healings, mistaken diagnoses of death, mass hysteria, and legendary accretion over decades of oral tradition before the Gospels were written. The force of this challenge lies in the enormous explanatory successes of natural science, which has progressively reduced the domain once attributed to divine intervention.

Response to Scientific Naturalism

The response to scientific naturalism distinguishes between methodological and metaphysical naturalism. Virtually all philosophers of science affirm the legitimacy of the former as a working assumption for scientific investigation, whereas the latter is a philosophical claim that goes beyond what science can establish. Alvin Plantinga has argued at length that metaphysical naturalism is not a result of natural science but an a priori philosophical commitment that itself requires philosophical justification.(16) William Lane Craig summarizes: "Science is not in the business of determining what can and cannot happen; it describes what does happen in normal circumstances. The question of whether a miracle has occurred is not a scientific question but a historical one."(17) Craig Keener further notes that dismissing miracle reports as prima facie unbelievable entails a cultural imperialism that dismisses the testimony of billions of people across human history. (18)

2.0 Historical Evidence for the Miracles of Jesus

2.1 The Gospel Sources

The primary historical sources for the miracles of Jesus are the four canonical Gospels. Scholarly dating of the Gospels is a contested field, but a broad critical consensus places Mark in the late 60s or around 70 CE, Matthew and Luke in the 80s, and John in the 90s of the first century.(19) This means the earliest Gospel was composed within about forty years of Jesus's death, within the lifetime of eyewitnesses.

Form-critical analysis has established that the written Gospels are based on oral traditions that circulated very close to the time of Jesus's ministry. In particular, miracle traditions, including exorcisms and healing accounts, are among the earliest and most multiply attested materials in the Synoptic tradition.

The New Testament provides no fewer than five independent sources attesting to Jesus' miracle-working

The Gospel of Mark (the earliest Gospel, c. 65–70 CE) The Q Source (a hypothetical sayings source shared by Matthew and Luke) The special Matthean source (unique material in Matthew) The special Lukan source (unique material in Luke) The Johannine tradition (recognized by scholars as independent of the Synoptics)

John Meier, applying rigorous historiographical criteria, identifies a substantial core of miracle traditions as historically credible, including the exorcisms, the healing of blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52 ESV), the cleansing of ten lepers (Luke 17:11–19 ESV), and the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:30–44 ESV). The latter is attested in all four Gospels, thereby meeting the criterion of multiple attestation.(20) Twelftree similarly argues that the exorcism tradition is so deeply embedded in the Synoptic material that it cannot be explained as a later invention.(21)

2.2 The Testimony of Non-Christian Sources

Perhaps the most striking historical corroboration of Jesus's reputation for miracle-working comes from non-Christian sources.

The Jewish historian Josephus, writes around 93–94 CE,

"Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man… for he was a doer of wonderful works — a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pride. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles." (22)

Most scholars acknowledge that even if the Testimonium has been partially Christianized through later scribal interpolation, the reference to Jesus' wonder-working activity likely preserves authentic Josephan material. (23)

The Babylonian Talmud contains a reference to Jesus being executed for "sorcery" (kishuf) and for "leading Israel astray" (b. Sanhedrin 43a). Although polemical in intent, this passage is historically significant because it does not deny the miracle-working attributed to Jesus but instead reinterprets it as sorcery, an admission that something remarkable was associated with him. (24) The charges of sorcery directed against Jesus in both Jewish and Roman sources are a backhanded acknowledgment of his reputation for extraordinary deeds.

Cornelius Tacitus, writing around 116 CE, mentions the execution of "Christus" under Pontius Pilate and the spread of the Christian movement.(25) Although Tacitus does not discuss miracles, his testimony affirms the historical reality of the movement that grew from the claims surrounding Jesus, including those of miracles. F. F. Bruce summarizes the significance of these sources: "The early Christians, in their public apologia, did not have to establish the fact that Jesus worked miracles; they had only to argue about the correct interpretation of those works."(26)

Crucially, even Jesus' opponents did not dispute that he performed miracles; they disputed the source of his power, attributing it to Beelzebul (Mark 3:22) rather than to God. This exemplifies what historians call the "Criterion of Enemy Attestation" — hostile sources confirming a basic fact while disputing its interpretation.

2.3 The Resurrection as the Central Miracle

Among the miracles attributed to Jesus, the resurrection holds a unique place for its historical and theological significance. The apostle Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 (ESV) about twenty years after the crucifixion, cites a pre-Pauline creedal formula that records appearances of the risen Christ to Cephas (Peter), the twelve, five hundred brethren, James, and Paul himself. The earliness of this tradition—most scholars date the underlying creed to within five years of the crucifixion, which places it beyond the reach of sustained legendary development.

Gary Habermas and Michael Licona identify a set of "minimal facts" about the resurrection that are accepted by the overwhelming majority of critical scholars, including skeptical ones: Jesus died by crucifixion; the disciples sincerely believed they saw Jesus risen; the conversion of Paul (a former persecutor); and the conversion of James (a former skeptic). (27) N. T. Wright's monumental study The Resurrection of the Son of God argues that the resurrection of Jesus is the only historically adequate explanation for the origin of early Christian belief in a context where no Jewish antecedent existed for the individual resurrection of a messiah before the general resurrection of the dead.(28)

3.0 Historical Criteria Applied to Miracles

3.1 The Standard Historical Criteria

[See Historicity, Jesus and Others to see all eight historical criteria]

Historians of the New Testament have developed a set of criteria for assessing the historical authenticity of traditions about Jesus, including the miracle traditions. C. Behan McCullagh has articulated general principles of historical reasoning that apply broadly. (29) The following are the most significant criteria applied to miracle accounts:

Criterion	Core Principle	Key Example
Multiple Attestation	A tradition is more likely historical when it appears in multiple independent sources	The feeding of the five thousand appears in all four Gospels (Matt 14:13–21; Mark 6:30–44; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–14), plus a second independent feeding tradition (Mark 8:1–10; Matt 15:32–39). (30)
Criterion of Embarrassment	A tradition is likely authentic if it includes elements that are embarrassing or inconvenient for the early church	Jesus's baptism by John (implying the need for repentance); Jesus's inability to perform miracles in Nazareth (Mark 6:5); Jesus's exorcisms interpreted as sorcery. (31)
Criterion of Dissimilarity	A tradition is more likely from the historical Jesus if it differs from both Jewish traditions and early church interests	Jesus's exorcisms used direct commands rather than elaborate ritual formulae common in Jewish and pagan magic. (32)
Criterion of Coherence	Material aligning with what is otherwise established about Jesus's ministry carries additional credibility	Healings and exorcisms align with Jesus's proclamation of the kingdom; Luke 7:21–22 explicitly links healings to the kingdom's arrival, citing Isaiah 35:5–6. (33)
Criterion of Palestinian Environment	A tradition is more likely to be early and authentic if it reflects a first-century Palestinian context rather than a later Hellenistic diaspora	Aramaic phrases talitha cumi (Mark 5:41) and ephphatha (Mark 7:34) suggest preservation of Jesus's actual words. (34)

3.2 The Best Explanation Framework

Beyond specific criteria, historians apply the broader standard of inference to the best explanation, asking which hypothesis best accounts for all available evidence. C. Behan McCullagh specifies that the best historical explanation must account for the evidence, be consistent with background knowledge, be relatively simple, and not be ad hoc.(35) N. T. Wright applies this framework to the resurrection, arguing that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is not only the most natural explanation of the empty tomb and the appearance traditions but also the only explanation that accounts for the transformation of the disciples from a demoralized, dispersed group into a movement willing to die for their proclamation that Jesus was risen.(36)

John Warwick Montgomery similarly argues that the canons of legal evidence, when applied to the New Testament documents, would yield a verdict in favor of the substantial historicity of the miracle accounts.(37) The documents were written close in time to the events they describe, by authors with access to eyewitnesses, in a context where hostile critics who knew the facts had every incentive to refute false claims but did not deny the miracles themselves, only their interpretation.

4.0 The Concept of Miracles in Other Worldviews

4.1 The Jewish Worldview

Christianity's understanding of miracles is deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition from which it emerged. In the Hebrew Bible, the terms most closely associated with miraculous acts are “sign” and “wonder,” referring to divine acts that authenticate prophets and demonstrate God's sovereignty over creation and history. The Exodus narrative, in particular, presents the plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea as signs that establish the God of Israel as the supreme power over all competing deities (Exod 7–14 ESV).

Unlike later Western conceptions, the Hebrew mind did not conceive of a natural law that God suspends; it understood all creation as continuously dependent on God's sustaining power, making the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary divine acts a matter of degree rather than of kind. (38)

Jewish responses to the miracles of Jesus vary widely. Some first-century Jewish sources, as noted, attributed Jesus's wonders to sorcery. Modern Jewish scholars often affirm that Jesus was a charismatic healer and exorcist within the tradition of Jewish holy men (hasidim), such as Honi the Circle-Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa, while rejecting the uniquely Christological interpretation of his miracles. (39)

4.2 The Islamic Worldview

Islam acknowledges the miracles of Jesus, including his healing of the blind and the leper and his raising of the dead, as recounted in the Quran (Surah 3:49; 5:110). These miracles are affirmed as divine gifts that confirm Jesus's prophethood. However, Islam categorically denies the crucifixion and bodily resurrection of Jesus, regarding the Christian interpretation of these events as a theological distortion. (40) For Islam, the supreme miracle is not Jesus, but the Quran itself, which is regarded as the inimitable word of God, and its linguistic and literary inimitability authenticates Muhammad's prophetic mission.

4.3 The Hindu Worldview

In the Hindu tradition, the category of the miraculous is vast and qualitatively different from the Western Christian conception. The cosmos is understood as the divine play (līlā) of Brahman, and miraculous powers (siddhis) are attainable through advanced yogic practice. Avatars, which are divine descents of Vishnu such as Rama and Krishna, perform extraordinary deeds that are analogous to miracles in the Christian sense: they reveal the divine power at work in history. Huston Smith notes that the Hindu framework is more hospitable to miracle claims in general because its metaphysical commitments do not draw as sharp a boundary between the natural and the supernatural; the entire created order is pervaded by divine power, and miraculous events are simply more visible manifestations of that pervasive reality.(41)

Keith Ward has argued that the comparative study of miracle claims across traditions can serve an apologetic function for Christianity: the very widespread human testimony to divine action in history, documented across cultures with no direct contact with the Christian tradition, suggests that such action is less improbable than the Humean critic supposes. (42) At the same time, the plurality of miracle traditions raises the question of how to adjudicate competing claims, a question that cannot be resolved by appeal to miracle reports alone and requires a broader theological and philosophical inquiry.

4.4 The Buddhist Worldview

Buddhism presents a distinctive case because its original teaching is explicitly suspicious of miraculous demonstrations. The historical Buddha reportedly discouraged his disciples from performing miracles to attract followers, considering such demonstrations a distraction from the path to liberation (nirvana).

Nevertheless, the later Buddhist tradition, particularly Mahayana Buddhism, ascribes numerous miraculous powers to bodhisattvas and to the Buddha himself, including the ability to multiply food, walk on water, and appear in multiple places simultaneously. Ninian Smart observes that the functional role of these traditions in Buddhist popular devotion closely parallels the role of miracle stories in Christianity: they reinforce faith in the spiritual power of the tradition's central figure and motivate adherence to its practices. (43)

4.5 The Naturalistic Worldview

Philosophical naturalism, the view that nature is the whole of reality and that no supernatural entities or causes exist, is not a religion but functions as the implicit worldview of much contemporary academic discourse. For the thoroughgoing naturalist, all purported miracles must be explained by natural causes, however inadequately understood; the only alternative is an appeal to ignorance. (44) The naturalist typically does not engage in the historical evaluation of specific miracle claims but issues a blanket prior rejection grounded in metaphysical beliefs.

Craig Keener has argued that this global rejection is itself a worldview commitment that should be acknowledged as such rather than presented as the conclusion of neutral scientific inquiry.(45) Richard Swinburne makes the broader point that naturalism's explanatory resources are limited: it can explain nature's regularities but struggles to account for the natural order itself, the fine-tuning of the cosmos for intelligent life, and the existence of conscious experience—challenges that theism addresses by postulating a personal Creator whose purposive action can, in principle, include miraculous intervention. (46)

The miracles of Jesus stand at the intersection of history, philosophy, and theology. There are many challenges to the miracles, each with its own problems. Ultimately, assessing the miracles of Jesus requires not only historical and philosophical investigation but also a willingness to consider the full range of evidence, including the transformation of lives, the origin of the church, and the testimony of the resurrection, within a coherent worldview. William Lane Craig's conclusion merits serious consideration: the resurrection of Jesus, assessed by the standard canons of historical inquiry, is the most credible explanation of the totality of the evidence. (47) Whatever conclusion one reaches, the intellectual engagement with the miracles of Jesus cannot be avoided by any honest inquiry into the foundations of Western civilization and the claims of Christian faith.

Endnotes

(1) David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 87.

(2) C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 105.

(3) Norman L. Geisler, Miracles and the Modern Mind: A Defense of Biblical Miracles (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 27.

(4) William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 275.

(5) Antony Flew, There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: HarperOne, 2007), 57.

(6) Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), 81.

(7) Richard Swinburne, The Concept of Miracle (London: Macmillan, 1970), 1.

(8) Rudolf Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 5.

(9) N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 186.

(10) Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3/2, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960), 441.

(11) John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 2, Mentor, Message, and Miracles (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 512.

(12) Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1999), 64.

(13) Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2:619.

(14) Graham H. Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological Study (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1999), 341.

(15) Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 1:23.

(16) Alvin Plantinga, "On Miracles," American Philosophical Quarterly 44, no. 1 (January 2007): 7.

(17) Craig, Reasonable Faith, 279.

(18) Keener, Miracles, 1:207.

(19) Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 310.

(20) Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2:520.

(21) Theissen and Merz, The Historical Jesus, 312.

(22) Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18.3.3, trans. William Whiston (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1999).

(23) Craig A. Evans, Jesus and His Contemporaries: Comparative Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 5.

(24) Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004), 49.

(25) Cornelius Tacitus, Annals, 15.44, trans. A. J. Woodman (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004).

(26) F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, 5th ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960), 120.

(27) Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection, 22.

(28) N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 709.

(29) C. Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 19.

(30) Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 192.

(31) Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2:630.

(32) Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker, 247.

(33) Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 194.

(34) Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker, 247.

(35) C. Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 19.

(36) N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 709.

(37) John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1964), 75.

(38) Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, 1959), 11.

(39) Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (New York: Ballantine, 1993), 155.

(40) Fazlur Rahman, Islam, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 13.

(41) Huston Smith, The World's Religions, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1991), 98.

(42) Keith Ward, God, Chance and Necessity (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996), 100.

(43) Ninian Smart, The World's Religions, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 62.

(44) Antony Flew, There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: HarperOne, 2007), 57.

(45) Keener, Miracles, 1:264.

(46) Swinburne, The Concept of Miracle, 60.

(47) Craig, Reasonable Faith, 360.