Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T16:17:54.466Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Miracles and Agents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

George D. Chryssides
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Philosophy, Plymouth Polytechnic

Extract

Suppose Jones sees a mountain in the distance and says to the mountain, ‘Mountain, cast yourself into the sea!’, whereupon the mountain is observed to rise up from its surroundings and fall into the water. If such a phenomenon occurred, why should we say that Jones moved the mountain, rather than that Jones addressed the mountain in a certain way and that by a strange coincidence the mountain happened to move an instant later and fall into the water?

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 319 note 1 Wells, H. G., ‘The Man Who Could Work Miracles’; in Selected Short Stories, Penguin ed., p. 299.Google Scholar

page 319 note 2 Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, Vol. I (Nisbet), p. 130.Google Scholar

page 320 note 1 John 2: 1–11; Mark 9: 14–29.

page 320 note 2 Swinburne, R. G., The Concept of Miracle (Macmillan)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hesse, Mary, Miracles and the Laws of Nature; in (ed.) Moule, C. F. D., Miracles (Mowbray), pp. 3542.Google Scholar

page 325 note 1 Matthew 14: 13–33.