"And from the great and well-known miracles a man comes to admit to hidden miracles which are the foundation of the whole Torah. A person has no portion in the Torah of Moses unless he acim that all our matters and circumstances are miracles and they do not follow nature or the general custom of the world …rather,Guest Posting if one does mitzvoth he will succeed due to the reward he merits …" (Nachmanides, or Ramba"n on Exodus 13:16)
“This Universe remains perpetually with the same properties with which the Creator has endowed it… none of these will ever be changed except by way of miracle in some individual instances….” (Maimonides, Ramba"m, Guide for the Perplexed, 2:29).
"(N)othing then, comes to pass in nature in contravention to her universal laws, nay, nothing does not agree with them and follow from them, for . . . she keeps a fixed and immutable order... (A) miracle, whether in contravention to, or beyond, nature, is a mere absurdity ... We may, then, be absolutely certain that every event which is truly described in Scripture necessarily happened, like everything else, according to natural laws." (Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologica-Politicus)
"Those whose judgment in these matters is so inclined that they suppose themselves to be helpless without miracles, believe that they soften the blow which reason suffers from them by holding that they happen but seldom ... How seldom? Once in a hundred years? . . . Here we can determine nothing on the basis of knowledge of the object . . . but only on the basis of the maxims which are necessary to the use of our reason. Thus, miracles must be admitted as (occurring) daily (though indeed hidden under the guise of natural events) or else never . . . Since the former alternative is not at all compatible with reason, nothing remains but to adopt the later maxim - for this principle remains ever a mere maxim for making judgments, not a theoretical assertion ... (For example: the) admirable conservation of the species in the plant and animal kingdoms, . . . no one, indeed, can claim to comprehend whether or not the direct influence of the Creator is required on each occasion ... (T)hey are for us, . . . nothing but natural effects and ought never to be adjudged otherwise . . . To venture beyond these limits is rashness and immodesty . . . In the affairs of life, therefore, it is impossible for us to count on miracles or to take them into consideration at all in our use of reason." (Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone)
Can God suspend the Laws of Nature, or even change or "cancel" them?
I. Historical Overview
God has allegedly created the Universe, or, at least, as Aristotle postulated, he acted as the "Unmoved Mover". But Creation was a one-time interaction. Did God, like certain software developers, embed in the world some "backdoors" or "Easter eggs" that allow Him to intervene in exceptional circumstances and change the preordained and predestined course of events? If he did, out go the concepts of determinism and predestination, thus undermining (and upsetting) quite a few religious denominations and schools of philosophy.
The Stoics were pantheists. They (and Spinoza, much later) described God (not merely the emanation of the Holy Ghost, but the genuine article Himself) as all-pervasive, His unavoidable ubiquity akin to the all-penetrating presence of the soul in a corporeal body. If God is Nature, then surely He can do as He wishes with the Laws of Nature?
Not so. Philo from Alexandria convincingly demonstrated that a perfect being can hardly be expected to remain in direct touch with imperfection. Lacking volition, wanting nothing, and not in need of thought, God, suggested Philo, uses an emanation he called "Logos" (later identified by the Apologists with Christ) as an intermediary between Himself and His Creation.
The Neoplatonist Plotinus concurred: Nature may need God, but it was a pretty one-sided relationship. God used emanations to act upon the World's stage: these were beings coming from Him, but not of Him. The Council of Nicea (325 AD) dispensed of this multiplication: the Father, the Son (Logos), and the Holy Ghost were all of the same substance, they were all God Himself. In modern times, Cartesian dualism neglected to explain by what transmission mechanisms God can and allegedly does affect the material cosmos.
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