1. WILES REJECTION OF MIRACLES LO: I will understand Wiles rejection of miracles. Homework: Revise!

2. Wiles  17 October 1923 – 3 June 2005  Anglican priest and academic. Anglican  British  Key text – Gods action in the world  Key ideas – God doesn’t intervene directly in the world, miracles don’t exist, lack of miracles don’t intervene with Christianity.  “...even so it would seem strange that no miraculous intervention prevented Auschwitz or Hiroshima while the purposes apparently forwarded by some of the miracles acclaimed in traditional Christian faith seem trivial by comparison” (Wiles, God’s Action in the World)

3. A moral rejection…..  If God could act to cure a child at Lourdes or to make statues weep or the blood of saints not to clot or to help some individual in relatively trivial ways then this would, Wiles maintains, mean that God would not be worthy of worship as if God could intervene and failed to do so in cases like the Holocaust, the Rwanda and Kosovo massacres or earthquakes  God would have to be rejected as not being worthy of worship because a God that chooses to help someone and not another and who often ignores those in need, would not be morally good  Wiles concluded that it is better theologically, to believe in a God that does not do any miracles than one that was not morally good  Wiles targets the story of the water being turned into wine and argues that the event is done to prevent the embarrassment of the hosts. However, in a world where suffering occurs on such a large scale, this would seem to be an arbitrary whim on God’s part  Wiles sees such Biblical accounts, including the resurrection, as having important symbolic value as they teach believers about God’s nature

4. Wiles arguments  1. If they are violations of the laws of nature, they must occur infrequently so that laws of nature are not meaningless  2. The pattern of miracle occurrences is strange  3. The large number of evil events not prevented by God raises questions about his omnipotence and goodness What does each idea mean? For and against each view?