How Can You Believe in Miracles?

Voice One

Augustine of Hippo — Miracles as Divine Signs

354–430 · Bishop of Hippo · City of God

Augustine established the theological framework for thinking about miracles that the Western Church has largely followed ever since. Miracles do not violate natural law — they reveal the limits of our understanding of it. They are acts of the One who authored nature, not violations of a system He is subject to.

For Augustine, miracles are signa — signs. They are not magical spectacles but holy signals pointing to divine reality. When the New Testament records a healing or a resurrection, it is not recording a conjuring trick. It is recording a visual sermon — God communicating through extraordinary means what He is saying through ordinary ones. Miracles point not to themselves but to the gospel they confirm and the Christ they reveal.

Augustine also warned against miracle-chasing. Signs were given to help unbelievers believe and strengthen the faithful in moments of doubt. But the goal was always transformation — not fascination. Miracles point to the ultimate miracle: a life changed from the inside by the power of Christ.

Voice Two

Thomas Aquinas — Super-Rational, Not Irrational

1225–1274 · Scholastic Theologian · Summa Theologica

Aquinas gave the Church one of its most precise theological treatments of miracles, distinguishing three categories:

For Aquinas, miracles are not irrational disruptions but super-rational revelations — events that transcend nature’s normal capacity while remaining fully consistent with God’s rational nature and purposes. They affirm the authority of God’s messengers and ultimately of Christ Himself. Within his framework of divine providence, miracles are not breaks in the system. They are moments when the system’s Author becomes more visibly present to its inhabitants.

Voice Three

C.S. Lewis — The Grand Miracle and Its Logic

1898–1963 · Oxford · Miracles

Lewis wrote his book Miracles as a direct engagement with the modern naturalist worldview — the assumption that nature is all there is. His central argument: naturalism cannot account for reason, morality, or consciousness, which means it fails on its own terms. If there is a supernatural Creator, then miracles are not irrational — they are exactly what you would expect from a personal God who has reasons to act.

For Lewis, the Incarnation is the grand miracle from which all others flow. If God became man — if the Author stepped into His own story — then the smaller miracles (healing, feeding, calming the sea, raising the dead) are not arbitrary. They have a logic. Each one is a signpost pointing toward the Kingdom: water into wine declares joy, feeding five thousand declares provision, resurrection declares the conquest of death. Every miracle is a declaration.

Lewis compared miracles to a playwright entering the play, or an artist walking into the painting. They are personal interventions by the Author of nature — not violations of His own creation, but acts that arise from His deeper purposes for it.

Voice Four

Alister McGrath — Relational Acts of a Personal God

b. 1953 · Oxford · Former atheist · The Big Question

McGrath brings an unusual perspective — he came to faith through science, not despite it, having spent years as a molecular biologist before becoming one of Oxford’s leading theologians. He does not see miracles as violations of natural law so much as revelations of a dimension of reality that science alone cannot access.

For McGrath, miracles are primarily relational — God making Himself personally present in a way that creates encounter rather than merely information. Miracles don’t just demonstrate that God is powerful. They demonstrate that He is near, that He sees, that He acts on behalf of those He loves. This is consistent with the covenant theme that runs through the whole of Scripture: a God who enters into binding, personal relationship with His people and acts within history to redeem and restore them.

McGrath also stresses that miracles are not anti-science. Science describes the patterns and mechanisms of the natural order — an extraordinary and important task. But it was never designed to speak to the question of why those patterns exist, or what lies beyond them. Miracles arise from a larger narrative that science alone cannot tell.

Voice Five

Tim Keller — Restoration, Not Violation

1950–2023 · Redeemer Presbyterian · The Reason for God

Keller’s framing is perhaps the most pastorally useful: miracles are not interruptions but restorations. When Jesus heals a blind man, He is not bending the rules — He is restoring what sin broke. The world was made for sight, for wholeness, for peace, for abundance. Sin corrupted the order. Miracles are glimpses of the world as it was always meant to be.

This framing makes miracles not arbitrary displays of power but foretastes of the Kingdom. They are not demonstrations that God can override nature; they are demonstrations of what nature will be when it is fully redeemed. Like windows thrown open to let in fresh air, miracles show us — for a moment — what God has always intended for creation. In a world of brokenness, they whisper: “This is not the end of the story.”

Voice Six

John Piper — Miracles for the Glory of Christ

b. 1946 · Desiring God · Desiring God

Piper brings a corrective that is as important as any of the affirmations: the purpose of miracles is not human entertainment, not personal comfort, and certainly not the validation of any individual’s spiritual status. Miracles are about the supremacy and beauty of Jesus Christ — and anything that puts them in the service of a different goal has missed the point.

Piper connects miracles to mission: as the apostles went out with the gospel, they were accompanied by signs and wonders that confirmed the message. But he is equally insistent that the greatest miracle is not a physical healing. It is the new birth — a heart of stone becoming a heart of flesh by the work of the Holy Spirit. Physical healings are powerful and temporary. Regeneration is eternal. Christians are called not only to pray for miracles but to marvel each day at the miracle of grace that has already been given to them.

Voice Seven

N.T. Wright — New Creation Has Already Begun

b. 1948 · Oxford · The Resurrection of the Son of God

Wright places miracles within the sweep of the whole biblical story — God’s plan to redeem and restore all of creation, not merely to rescue souls from a burning world. Miracles are not breaks in the story; they are the story’s decisive moments becoming visible.

The resurrection of Jesus, for Wright, is the pivotal miracle — not merely a spiritual event but a physical, historical one with consequences that extend across all of time and creation. It is the beginning of the new creation breaking into the old. Every other miracle participates in that new creation: they are signs that death and brokenness do not have the final word, that the world Jesus is restoring is more real than the world currently visible, and that what we do with our bodies in this life genuinely matters because God takes bodies seriously enough to raise one from the dead.

Miracles, for Wright, awaken eschatological hope — the conviction that justice, healing, and restoration are not wishful thinking but guaranteed future realities, already breaking in.