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An event in nature may be caused by an agent in nature yet above nature. This is evident from the following considerations:

(a) Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently counteracted and transcended by the higher (as mechanical forces and laws by chemical, and chemical by vital), while yet the lower forces and laws are not suspended or annihilated, but are merged in the higher, and made to assist in accomplishing purposes to which they are altogether unequal when left to themselves.

By nature we mean nature in the proper sense—not “everything that is not God,” but “everything that is not God or made in the image of God”; see Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 258, 259. Man's will does not belong to nature, but is above nature. On the transcending of lower forces by higher, see Murphy, Habit and Intelligence, 1:88. James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, 23—“Is it impossible that there should be unique things in the world? Is it scientific to assert that there are not?” Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 406—“Why does not the projecting part of the coping-stone fall, in obedience to the law of gravitation, from the top of yonder building? Because, as physics declares, the forces of cohesion, acting under quite different laws, thwart and oppose for the time being the law of gravitation. … But now, after a frosty night, the coping-stone actually breaks off and tumbles to the ground; for that unique law which makes water forcibly expand at 32° Fahrenheit has contradicted the laws of cohesion and has restored to the law of gravitation its temporarily suspended rights over this mass of matter.” Gore, Incarnation, 48—“Evolution views nature as a progressive order in which there are new departures, fresh levels won, phenomena unknown before. When organic life appeared, the future did not resemble the past. So when man came. Christ is a new nature—the creative Word made flesh. It is to be expected that, as new nature, he will exhibit new phenomena. New vital energy will radiate from him, controlling the material forces. Miracles are the proper accompaniments of his person.” We may add that, as Christ is the immanent God, he is present in nature while at the same time he is above nature, and he whose steady will is the essence of all natural law can transcend all past exertions of that will. The infinite One is not a being of endless monotony. William Elder, Ideas from Nature, 156—“God is not bound hopelessly to his process, like Ixion to his wheel.”

(b) The human will acts upon its physical organism, and so upon nature, and produces results which nature left to herself never could accomplish, while yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. Gravitation still operates upon the axe, even while man holds it at the surface of the water—for the axe still has weight (cf. 2 K. 6:5–7).

Versus Hume, Philos. Works, 4:130—“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.”Christian apologists have too often needlessly embarrassed their argument by accepting Hume's definition. The stigma is entirely undeserved. If man can support the axe at the surface of the water while gravitation still acts upon it, God can certainly, at the prophet's word, make the iron to swim, while gravitation still acts upon it. But this last is miracle. See Mansel, Essay on Miracles, in Aids to Faith, 26, 27: After the greatest wave of the season has landed its pebble high up on the beach, I can move the pebble a foot further without altering the force of wind or wave or climate in a distant continent. Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 471; Hamilton, Autology, 685–690; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 445; Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 54–74; A. A. Hodge: Pulling out a new stop of the organ does not suspend the working or destroy the harmony of the other stops. The pump does not suspend the law of gravitation, nor does our throwing a ball into the air. If gravitation did not act, the upward velocity of the ball would not diminish and the ball would never return. “Gravitation draws iron down. But the magnet overcomes that attraction and draws the iron up. Yet here is no suspension or violation of law, but rather a harmonious working of two laws, each in its sphere. Death and not life is the order of nature. But men live notwithstanding. Life is supernatural. Only as a force additional to mere nature works against nature does life exist. So spiritual life uses and transcends the laws of nature” (Sunday School Times). Gladden, What Is Left? 60—“Wherever you find thought, choice, love, you find something that is not under the dominion of fixed law. These are the attributes of a free personality.” William James: “We need to substitute the personal view of life for the impersonal and mechanical view. Mechanical rationalism is narrowness and partial induction of facts—it is not science.”

(c) In all free causation, there is an acting without means. Man acts upon external nature through his physical organism, but, in moving his physical organism, he acts directly upon matter. In other words, the human will can use means, only because it has the power of acting initially without means.

See Hopkins, on Prayer-gauge, 10, and in Princeton Review, Sept. 1882:188. A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 311—“Not Divinity alone intervenes in the world of things. Each living soul, in its measure and degree, does the same.” Each soul that acts in any way on its surroundings does so on the principle of the miracle. Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350—“The making of all events miraculous is no more an abolition of miracle than the flooding of the world with sunshine is an extinction of the sun.”George Adam Smith, on Is. 33:14—“devouring fire … everlasting burnings”: “If we look at a conflagration through smoked glass, we see buildings collapsing, but we see no fire. So science sees results, but not the power which produces them; sees cause and effect, but does not see God.” P.S. Henson: “The current in an electric wire is invisible so long as it circulates uniformly. But cut the wire and insert a piece of carbon between the two broken ends, and at once you have an arc-light that drives away the darkness. So miracle is only the momentary interruption in the operation of uniform laws, which thus gives light to the ages,”—or, let us say rather, the momentary change in the method of their operation whereby the will of God takes a new form of manifestation. Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 100—“Spinoza leugnete ihre metaphysische Möglichkeit, Hume ihre geschichtliche Erkennbarkeit, Kant ihre practische Brauchbarkeit, Schleiermacher ihre religiöse Bedeutsamkeit, Hegel ihre geistige Beweiskraft, Fichte ihre wahre Christlichkeit, und die kritische Theologie ihre wahre Geschichtlichkeit.”

(d) What the human will, considered as a supernatural force, and what the chemical and vital forces of nature itself, are demonstrably able to accomplish, cannot be regarded as beyond the power of God, so long as God dwells in and controls the universe. If man's will can act directly upon matter in his own physical organism, God's will can work immediately upon the system which he has created and which he sustains. In other words, if there be a God, and if he be a personal being, miracles are possible. The impossibility of miracles can be maintained only upon principles of atheism or pantheism.

See Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, 19; Cox, Miracles, an Argument and a Challenge: “Anthropomorphism is preferable to hylomorphism.” Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in a New Light, ch. 1—“A miracle is not a sudden blow struck in the face of nature, but a use of nature, according to its inherent capacities, by higher powers.”See also Gloatz, Wunder und Naturgesetz, in Studien und Kritiken, 1886:403–546; Gunsaulus, Transfiguration of Christ, 18, 19, 26; Andover Review, on “Robert Elsmere,”1888:303; W. E. Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, 1888:766–788; Dubois, on Science and Miracle, in New Englander, July, 1889:1–32—Three postulates: (1) Every particle attracts every other in the universe; (2) Man's will is free; (3) Every volition is accompanied by corresponding brain-action. Hence every volition of ours causes changes throughout the whole universe; also, in Century Magazine, Dec. 1894:229—Conditions are never twice the same in nature; all things are the results of will, since we know that the least thought of ours shakes the universe; miracle is simply the action of will in unique conditions; the beginning of life, the origin of consciousness, these are miracles, yet they are strictly natural; prayer and the mind that frames it are conditions which the Mind in nature cannot ignore. Cf. Ps. 115:3—“our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever he pleased” = his almighty power and freedom do away with all a priori objections to miracles. If God is not a mere force, but a person, then miracles are possible.

(e) This possibility of miracles becomes doubly sure to those who see in Christ none other than the immanent God manifested to creatures. The Logos or divine Reason who is the principle of all growth and evolution can make God known only by means of successive new impartations of his energy. Since all progress implies increment, and Christ is the only source of life, the whole history of creation is a witness to the possibility of miracle.

See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163–166—“This conception of evolution is that of Lotze. That great philosopher, whose influence is more potent than any other in present thought, does not regard the universe as a plenum to which nothing can be added in the way of force. He looks upon the universe rather as a plastic organism to which new impulses can be imparted from him of whose thought and will it is an expression. These impulses, once imparted, abide in the organism and are thereafter subject to its law. Though these impulses come from within, they come not from the finite mechanism but from the immanent God. Robert Browning's phrase, ‘All's love, but all's law,’ must be interpreted as meaning that the very movements of the planets and all the operations of nature are revelations of a personal and present God, but it must not be interpreted as meaning that God runs in a rut, that he is confined to mechanism, that he is incapable of unique and startling manifestations of power.

“The idea that gives to evolution its hold upon thinking minds is the idea of continuity. But absolute continuity is inconsistent with progress. If the future is not simply a reproduction of the past, there must be some new cause of change. In order to progress there must be either a new force, or a new combination of forces, and the new combination of forces can be explained only by some new force that causes the combination. This new force, moreover, must be intelligent force, if the evolution is to be toward the better instead of toward the worse. The continuity must be continuity not of forces but of plan. The forces may increase, nay, they must increase, unless the new is to be a mere repetition of the old. There must be additional energy imparted, the new combination brought about, and all this implies purpose and will. But through all there runs one continuous plan, and upon this plan the rationality of evolution depends.

“A man builds a house. In laying the foundation he uses stone and mortar, but he makes the walls of wood and the roof of tin. In the superstructure he brings into play different laws from those which apply to the foundation. There is continuity, not of material, but of plan. Progress from cellar to garret requires breaks here and there, and the bringing in of new forces; in fact, without the bringing in of these new forces the evolution of the house would be impossible. Now substitute for the foundation and superstructure living things like the chrysalis and the butterfly; imagine the power to work from within and not from without; and you see that true continuity does not exclude but involves new beginnings.

“Evolution, then, depends on increments of force plus continuity of plan. New creations are possible because the immanent God has not exhausted himself. Miracle is possible because God is not far away, but is at hand to do whatever the needs of his moral universe may require. Regeneration and answers to prayer are possible for the very reason that these are the objects for which the universe was built. If we were deists, believing in a distant God and a mechanical universe, evolution and Christianity would be irreconcilable. But since we believe in a dynamical universe, of which the personal and living God is the inner source of energy, evolution is but the basis, foundation and background of Christianity, the silent and regular working of him who, in the fulness of time, utters his voice in Christ and the Cross.”

Lotze's own statement of his position may be found in his Microcosmos, 2:479 sq.Professor James Ten Broeke has interpreted him as follows: “He makes the possibility of the miracle depend upon the close and intimate action and reaction between the world and the personal Absolute, in consequence of which the movements of the natural world are carried on only through the Absolute, with the possibility of a variation in the general course of things, according to existing facts and the purpose of the divine Governor.”