4. The 'supernatural-without-miracle' theory.
— The real JH^^r/ of all theories which attempt to explain the apostolic belief in the Resurrection without accepting the full apostolic representation of the fact is the repugnance to the ailiiussion of the supernatural in any specific or unique sense in the physical realm. This is the presupposition or
366 KESUKKKCTIOX OF CHRIST
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
prmjiitiiciiim lying behind and determining the attituile of imitlerii thou};ht to the evidence; so th;it tlie fmidiuiiental apoloi,'etic problem to-day in coinu'xion with the Resurrection is, as it has been in all ajrcs, the problem of the supernatural. The latest eviileiice of tiiis is the attitude of Sanday to the bodily Resurrection as definitely elicited by his controversy with Gore. His ' entire and strong belief in the central reality of the . . . Supernatu- ral Resurrection ' Samlay airunis (Bishop Gnre's Chnllenge, p. 2S) ; but he claims that this need not involve the admission of the 'nature-miracle' of the resuscitation of the Body from the tomb. Sanday adopts the old distinction between contra iirilumm and supra natiiram miracles. The latter, the ' healing-miracles 'of the Gospels, 'were abundantly accounted for by the presence in the world of a unii|ue Personality, and by that wave of new spiritual force which rtowed from it in ever- increasing volume. They involved no real breach in the order of nature (p. 24). The 'nature- nnracles' of the (Jospels, however, with the bodily resurrection of Jesus as the supreme instance, are represented as not merely thus supra naturam but as contra natunim, involving a ' definite reversal of the natural physical order' (p. 23). The con- ception of 'nature-miracles' ' took its rise in the region of the Old Testament ' through the influence of myths or legends gathering round great person- alities In a pre-scientilic age and 'perpetuated itself in the New Testament' (p. 27). But the admission of such miracles is contrary to the postulate of modern science, the uniformity of nature, ' the beautiful regularity that we see around us . . . the law of the Divine action from the beginning to the end of time' (p. 30), and must be dropped. So the ^^•atchword of much current Christian apologetic in its attempt to recommend Christianity to the 'undetermined' is 'the super- natural without miracle.' This is the point of view represented in an extreme form by J. M. Thomp- son's Miracles in the New Testament (London, 1911).
At the root of this modern repugnance to the supernatural in the physical region lies the con- ception of miracle as a ' violation of natural law,' or 'a breach in the order of nature.' This is the view of miracle which, e.g., controls Schmiedel's negative criticism. ' By miracle we here through- out understand an occurrence that unquestionably is against natural law' (EBi iv. 4040). This is the view which already underlay Hume's famous argument in his essay 'On Miracles' (Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, 2 vols., ed. London, 1907) as to the insutiiciency of evidence for the alleged Gospel miracles in face of our experience of the regularity of nature, and of the notorious fallibility of human testimony to extraordinary events. 'A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature ; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined ' (ii. 93). He takes the Resur- rection as his typical example. ' It is no miracle that a man . . . should die on a sudden : because such a kind of death . . . has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed, in any age or country ' (ib.). Briefly, it is wmtrary to experience that a miracle should be true, but not contrary to experience that human testimony should be false (cf. ii. 105).
While the 'healing' miracles of the Gospels, or most of them, may be scientifically explicable in accordance with laws recognized by modern science (what M. Arnold called 'moral therapeutics'), the ' nature-miracles,' with the bodily Resurrection
as the supreme instance, are ruled out as violations of natural law. This objection to nature-miracles, however, goes back to a view of nature and natural law which, as the ofl'spring of a mechanical view of the world, is now obsolete, yet which continues to influence thought in subtle ways. If nature be regarded as a closed mechanical system ow ing its origin, it may be, to the creative power and wisdom of the Divine, but now a self-sufficient, self- running order bound together by iron bomls of natural law, then what we call ' miracle ' can be conceived only as an intervention from without, an inroad or intrusion into an ordered and complete mechanical whole. But if nature, as a more adequate philosophy is now teaching us, and as science itself is increasingly recognizing, is no such closed mechanical system shut in upon itself, hut alive, moving, a growing organism, a process of creative evolution ; if its laws are not ultimate realities or entities which bind the universe into a changeless mechanism of material forces, but simjily nuides of the Divine activity, forms of God's self-expression — then a very different con- ception of miracle presents itself. The distinction between 'natural' and 'supernatural' becomes a distinction between lower and higher forms of Divine activity. What is called the 'natural order' is God's basal method of working in the world, the indispensable condition of all stable rational experience. What are called the ' laws of nature' are the general laws of sequence based on past observation and experience of the Divine working on this basal level — 'a convenient short- hand method of summing up our existing knowleiige' — whereby we can say that if the same conditions are fulfilled the same results will follow. In this sen.se nature is 'uniform' or 'regular.' If the conditions are changed, however, and new forces are introduced whereby a new level of Divine working is brought about, the ordinary laws of nature are not violated or contradicted but tran- scended, their action is controlled or modified for higher ends. Standing at the lower level and without experience of the higher, the new experi- ences may seem to contradict what is natural at that level, to be in that sense contra naturam, while really, as St. Augustine long ago pointed out, being only ' contrary to nature so far as yet known' ('non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura ' [de Civ. Dei, xxi. 8]). From the point of view of the physical order the phenomena of organic nature and still more of self-conscious per- sonality will appear as if they contradicted the laws of that order. They would be contradictory only if these laws were assumed to be final and ultimate instead of being means to ends beyond themselves. Apply this to the nature-miracles of Jesus, and in particular to His bodily resurrection. If we regard Jesus of Nazareth as one whose life moved wholly on the plane of our ordi- nary htiman experience, the contra naturam argu- ment might be urged with plausibility. But in Jesus, as the narratives present Him, we have a new phenomenon in human history, unique in His character, person, and work. He stood in the midst of a sinful world, the alone sinless One, living in perfect communion with God, and claim- ingauniqtie relation to God and man — a claim which He substantiated in the experience of those who submitted themselves to Him, making them verit- ably 'new creations.' This is a miracle in the moral and spiritual sphere as wonderful as any alleged miracle in the physical. It is a new departure in human history — in this sense 'con- trary to experience' — so that we cannot criticize Him by the light of any canons drawn from our past experience of ordinary humanity. In the case of such a new phenomenon we should ante-