Showing papers in "International Philosophical Quarterly in 1962"

Miracles: Nowell-Smith’s Analysis and Tillich’s Phenomenology

Abstract: The concept of a justifying explanation may be usefully employed in pointing towards at least two salutary explications for the still vexed notion of a Miracle. In at least two ways, a person can take something to be miraculous, and can reasonably take it to be so. Either he can if he reasonably takes it to be a sign that there is some (perhaps still hidden, but real) justifying explanation of the world and human history. Or he can if he reasonably takes it to be a sign that some particular religious, metaphysical or broadly ideological position supplies the wisest form of justifying explanation for a limited and fallible, but rational mind like his own. What does “reasonably takes” signify? If he takes it to be a miracle reasonably then he must meet most of the criteria for reasonableness that were discussed in Chapter I.