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David Hume and the Mysterious Shroud of Turin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Edward L. Schoen
Edward L. Schoen
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Religion, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky 42101
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Extract

In a footnote to ‘Of Miracles’, David Hume defined the miraculous as ‘… a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.’ In the opening pages of the essay itself, however, Hume dropped the reference to agency in favour of the simpler declaration that any ‘ … miracle is a violation of the laws of nature …’ This preference for the simpler formulation was deliberate. According to Hume, it was their violation of natural law that provided the genuinely intimidating obstacle against miracles. As the course of his argument makes clear, Hume believed that the massive accumulation of evidence supporting the regularity of nature invariably would overwhelm any meagre reports to the contrary. For this reason alone, questions of divine agency could be ignored as purely academic.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , June 1991 , pp. 209 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 Hume, David, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hendel, Charles W., editor (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1955), p. 123Google Scholar, Note 7. Emphasis in original.

2 Hume, David, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 122.Google Scholar

3 For the main line of Hume's argument, see An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, pp. 123ff.Google Scholar

4 McKinnon, Alastair, ‘“Miracle” and “Paradox”’, in American Philosophical Quarterly, IV, 4 (1967), 309.Google Scholar See also Flew, Antony, Hume's Philosophy of Belief (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), Chapter VIII.Google Scholar A more recent example along these same line is Everitt, Nicholas, ‘The Impossibility of Miracles’, in Religious Studies, XXIII, 3 (1987), 347–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See Swinburne, Richard, The Concept of Miracle (London: Macmillan, 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Recently, Mavrodes, George I., ‘Miracles and the Laws of Nature’, in Faith and Philosophy, II, 4 (1985), 333–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, used analogies between civil and natural laws to argue that violations of natural law are possible. Lowe, E. J., ‘Miracles and the Laws of Nature’, in Religious Studies, XXIII, 2 (1987), 263–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar employed a normative conception of natural laws to argue to a similar conclusion.

6 Ross, J. P., ‘Some Notes on Miracle in the Old Testament’, in C. F. D. Moule, Miracles: Cambridge Studies in their Philosophy and History (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1965), p. 45.Google Scholar The sweep of articles in this volume provides an excellent indication of the pervasive influence of Hume's conception of miracles.

7 Ross, J. P., ‘Some Notes on Miracle in the Old Testament’, 45.Google Scholar Emphasis in original.

8 See Ross, J. P., ‘Some Notes on Miracle in the Old Testament’, 58–60.Google Scholar

9 Recently, in his ‘Reconceiving Miracles’, in Religious Studies, XXV, 4 (1989), 477–87Google Scholar, Gilman, James E. argued for a reconception of miracles in terms of divine agency. In the course of his discussion, Professor Gilman claimed that miracles may counteract, though never violate, natural laws (p. 480)Google Scholar and that miracles can be identified only through the eyes of faith (p. 485). Both of these claims will be disputed in the course of this discussion. In his ‘Miracles and the Laws of Nature’, in Dialogue, XXIV (1985), 227–35Google Scholar, Robert A. Larmer also defined miracles in terms of origins. Unfortunately, since Professor Larmer relied upon a positivistic conception of lawful explanation, he failed to appreciate the full complexity of the possible relations between miracles and scientific laws.

10 Hume, David, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. xxxi.Google Scholar

11 Swinburne, Richard, The Concept of Miracle, p. 23.Google Scholar

12 Swinburne, Richard, The Concept of Miracle, p. 3.Google Scholar

13 Pearl, Leon, ‘Miracles and Theism’, in Religious Studies, XXIV, 4 (1988), 483–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, took this line of argument to endorse the conception of miracles as violations of natural law.

14 For the purposes of this discussion, it will not be necessary to develop any detailed understanding of either natural or scientific laws. For sophisticated treatments of such topics, see Fraasen, Bas Van, Laws and Symmetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Cartwright, Nancy, How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The position implicit in this present discussion was influenced by both of these works, though it closely conforms to neither.

15 Newton, Isaac, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1934)Google Scholar, Cajori, Florian, translator, Book I, Proposition LXIX, Theorem XXIX, Scholium, p. 192.Google Scholar Emphasis in original.

16 McMullin, Ernan, Newton on Matter and Activity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978)Google Scholar, provides a concise discussion of Newton's struggles to understand the fundamental forces of nature.

17 Walker, Ian, ‘Miracles and Violations’, in International journal for Philosophy of Religion, XIII, 2 (1982), 103–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Basinger, David, ‘Miracles as Violations: Some Clarifications’, in Southern journal of Philosophy, XXII, I (1984), 1–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, are two of the very few discussions of miracles that distinguish laws from forces. Unfortunately, in both papers, the distinction was too undeveloped to be of systematic use. As a result, Professor Walker persisted in the belief that miracles cannot regularly occur, while Professor Basinger concluded that supernaturally produced events cannot violate natural laws. Mavrodes, George I., ‘Miracles and the Laws of Nature’Google Scholar, almost distinguished laws from forces, but in the last few pages seemed to identify the two by suggesting that the law of gravity might amount to a power.

18 In his ‘The Problem of Miracles and the Paradox of Double Agency’, in Modern Theology, I, 3 (1985), 211–22Google Scholar, Jeffrey C. Eaton missed this important aspect of detailed scientific understanding, mistakenly concluding that the sciences can never provide evidence of divine intervention.

19 McKinnon, Alastair, ‘“Miracles” and “Paradox”’Google Scholar, argued this way. In response, Pearl, Leon, ‘Miracles: The Case for Theism’, in American Philosophical Quarterly, XXV, 4 (1988), 333Google Scholar, claimed that miracles might recur, though only rarely, while Rein, Andrew, ‘Repeatable Miracles?’, in Analysis, XLVI, 2 (1986), 111Google Scholar, suggested the possibility of miracles recurring in predictable ways.

20 I have tried to explore some of the relations among certain forms of religious and scientific explanations in Schoen, Edward L., Religious Explanations: A Model from the Sciences (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

21 Stevenson, Kenneth E. and Habermas, Gary R., Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1981), pp. 67–70.Google Scholar Emphasis in original.

22 See Stevenson, Kenneth E. and Habermas, Gary R., Verdict on the Shroud, pp. 191–7.Google Scholar

23 Stevenson, Kenneth E. and Habermas, Gary R., Verdict on the Shroud, p. 199.Google Scholar

24 See Burns, Robert M., The Great Debate on Miracles: From joseph Glanvill to David Hume (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, for a useful survey of the range of positions held during this period.