Miracles, Reason, and the Limits of Nature:
A Reflection on Jesus, Spinoza, Hume, and Scientific Thought
- by lim ju boo, alias lin ru wu (林 如 武)
I received a video claim from my brother-in-law that Jesus did not perform any miracle according to Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677).
Let me counteract that claim from my scientific and theological point-of-view.
According to Spinoza who lived long after Jesus he could not find any record from the Romans documents during the time of Jesus performing any miracles.
First of all, Jesus did not write one word about Himself to claim Himself as the Son of God and His about miracles. It came from a voice from heaven declaring Jesus as the Son of God.
It occurred at His baptism, and this was recorded in three (3) gospels (Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22 where God proclaims,
"This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased", following the Holy Sprit's decent like a dove, affirming Jesus's divine identity and God's pleasure in Him.
But Jesus in His humility only referred to Himself as "Son of Man" while the Gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) and others wrote the accounts proclaiming He was the Son of God.
All His miracles, teachings and works were recorded by John, Luke, Mark and Matthews independently and were witnessed by thousands of people during their time. It was Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judaea who presided over the trial of Jesus and ultimately ordered his crucifixion. I believe it was the Romans themselves who deleted all records of Jesus and His miracles.
From time to time, modern discussions resurface old philosophical objections to the miracles of Jesus. Recently, claims have circulated that Jesus performed no miracles because later philosophers, most notably Spinoza found no Roman records confirming them. Such arguments often appear persuasive in brief videos, yet they rest on philosophical assumptions rather than historical evidence.
This paper of mine examines who Spinoza and David Hume were, what they actually argued about miracles, how these arguments relate to science and medicine; areas of studies I am very familiar, and why the absence of Roman miracle records does not invalidate the Gospel accounts.
Jesus and the Historical Record
Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught in a predominantly oral culture. Like other great teachers of antiquity like Socrates, Buddha, and many Jewish rabbis. Jesus wrote nothing Himself, not a single word, to praise Himself, showing Jesus immense humility so unlike others. Had Jesus wrote about Himself and about His miracles, or that He was a Son of God, no one during His time down to this present generation would believe His self praise and self claims. He only repeatedly said He was the Son of Man.
His teachings and deeds were preserved by disciples and early communities who memorized, repeated, and transmitted them long before they were written down.
The four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written independently, in different regions, for different audiences, and with distinct theological emphases. His miracles were not only documented independently by His four disciples, but were witness by thousands of witnesses during His time. They and thousands couldn’t have lied, let alone lied together in unison. Yet they agree on core claims: Jesus healed the sick, restored sight to the blind, cleansed lepers, cast out demons, and raised the dead. These acts were public, widely known, and acknowledged even by His opponents, who did not deny the deeds but questioned their source.
Roman administrators, however, were not chroniclers of local religious events. Their records focused on taxation, governance, and rebellion. That Jesus appears at all in Roman and non-Christian Jewish sources, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Josephus is remarkable. None of these writers deny Jesus’ reputation as a wonder-worker; they simply had no reason to catalogue healings among peasants in Galilee.
Who Was Baruch Spinoza?
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632–1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Jewish origin and one of the most influential rationalists of the Enlightenment. Living more than sixteen centuries after Jesus, Spinoza had no direct historical access to the events of the first century. His contribution was not historical investigation but philosophical redefinition.
Spinoza’s central idea was Deus sive Natura, “God or Nature.” For him, God was not a transcendent personal being who could intervene in the world, but the totality of nature itself. From this premise followed a strict conclusion: the laws of nature are immutable, and anything described as a miracle must merely reflect human ignorance of natural causes.
When Spinoza rejected miracles, he was not claiming that Roman archives disproved them. He dismissed them in principle, before examining testimony. For Spinoza, miracles were impossible by definition, because God could not act outside Himself. Thus, his rejection of Jesus’ miracles tells us far more about Spinoza’s metaphysics than about first-century history.
Who Was David Hume?
David Hume (1711–1776), a Scottish philosopher, approached miracles differently. Unlike Spinoza, Hume did not deny the possibility of miracles outright. Instead, he introduced a probabilistic argument.
Hume defined a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature and argued that such laws are established by uniform human experience. Therefore, he claimed, it is always more rational to believe that witnesses were mistaken, deceived, or deceiving than that a law of nature was violated.
Yet Hume conceded something often overlooked: if testimony were sufficiently strong, numerous, and independent, especially from honest witnesses willing to suffer for their claims, belief in a miracle might be justified. His argument was not a scientific refutation but an epistemological caution: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Spinoza and Hume Compared
Spinoza and Hume are often grouped together, but they differ fundamentally.
Spinoza rejected miracles because his philosophy could not accommodate them. God, being identical with nature, could not intervene. His position is absolute and closed.
Hume, by contrast, left the door slightly open. His skepticism targeted human testimony rather than divine action. While he doubted miracle claims, he did not declare them impossible, only improbable.
Neither man was a historian of early Christianity. Neither examined medical case records, eyewitness depositions, or archaeological data. Their conclusions arose from philosophical frameworks, not empirical investigation.
Miracles and the Laws of Nature
A frequent claim is that miracles violate biological, chemical, or physical laws. This assumes that scientific laws are prescriptive, rather than descriptive. In reality, science describes how nature behaves under normal conditions. It does not decree what is possible in all circumstances.
Medical science itself acknowledges spontaneous remissions, unexpected recoveries, and phenomena without current explanation. When such events occur, medicine does not say “this is impossible”; it says “the mechanism is unknown.”
If God exists as a transcendent Creator, then natural laws describe regular patterns within creation, not constraints upon the Creator. A miracle, in this view, is not a violation of nature but an intervention by the author of nature, just as a programmer may alter a running program without contradicting its internal logic.
Miracles in Medical Perspective
From a medical standpoint, several Gospel healings cannot be dismissed lightly. Conditions described, congenital blindness, paralysis, advanced leprosy, hemorrhagic illness, and death, were recognized conditions even in antiquity. Some healings were instantaneous, public, and verifiable, occurring in hostile environments among skeptics.
Psychosomatic explanations may account for some recoveries, but not all. Raising the dead, restoring sight to one born blind, or healing advanced leprosy in seconds lie well beyond placebo effects. Medicine today can explain how healing occurs, but it cannot rule out who may act beyond known mechanisms.
Why Roman Silence Does Not Disprove Miracles
The argument that miracles did not occur because Romans did not record them misunderstands history. Roman silence is expected. The crucifixion itself, a politically relevant execution is what appears in Roman sources. Miracles belonged to the religious life of a subject people and were of no administrative concern.
Ironically, the very persistence of miracle traditions, despite persecution, martyrdom, and lack of political power suggests sincerity rather than fabrication.
My final analysis is, Spinoza and Hume remain towering figures in philosophy, but neither can settle the historical question of Jesus’ miracles. Spinoza dismissed miracles because his philosophy forbade them. He used the laws in science to dispute the possibility of miracles. But Hume doubted them because he distrusted testimony. Neither lived in the world of first-century Judea, nor did they examine eyewitness traditions as historians do.
Science cannot disprove miracles, because it studies repeatable regularities, not singular historical events. Medicine cannot deny all extraordinary healings, because it still confronts the limits of its own explanations.
Ultimately, the question of Jesus’ miracles is not resolved by short videos or philosophical slogans. It lies at the intersection of history, testimony, experience, and worldview. Faith does not require the abandonment of reason, but reason must acknowledge where its jurisdiction ends.
Here is my Chinese version which I think reads like a philosophy + medicine + theology essay. If this were published in a Chinese journal or Christian magazine, it would be very well received - I believe!
奇迹、理性与自然的界限：
关于耶稣、斯宾诺莎、休谟与科学思想的反思
我最近收到一段来自我连襟的视频，说根据哲学家本尼迪克特·斯宾诺莎（Benedict Spinoza，1632–1677）的观点，耶稣并没有行过任何奇迹。
我想从科学与神学的角度，对这一说法作出回应。
斯宾诺莎生活在耶稣之后一千多年，他声称在耶稣时代的罗马官方文献中找不到任何关于耶稣行神迹的记录。
首先，耶稣本人从未写下任何关于自己的文字，从未自称自己是上帝之子，也从未为自己的奇迹作任何书面宣称。
耶稣只称自己为“人子”（Son of Man）。而是后来的福音书作者——马太、马可、路加和约翰——记录了他的事迹，并宣称他是上帝的儿子。
耶稣所有的奇迹、教导与事工，都是由这四位作者分别、独立记录的，并且在当时有成千上万的人亲眼目睹。主持审判耶稣并下令将他钉十字架的，是当时犹太行省的罗马总督本丢·彼拉多（Pontius Pilate）。
我个人相信，正是罗马当局后来删除或忽略了关于耶稣及其奇迹的记录。
时至今日，关于耶稣奇迹的哲学反对意见仍不时被重新提起。最近一些短视频声称，耶稣并未行过奇迹，因为像斯宾诺莎这样的哲学家找不到罗马文献加以证实。这类论证在形式上看似有说服力，但本质上建立在哲学假设之上，而非历史证据。
本文将探讨斯宾诺莎与大卫·休谟（David Hume）究竟是谁，他们关于奇迹的真实论点是什么，这些论点与科学和医学（我非常熟悉的领域）有何关系，以及为什么罗马文献中缺乏记载并不能否定福音书中的记述。
耶稣与历史记录
耶稣生活在一个以口述传统为主的时代，就像苏格拉底、佛陀以及许多犹太拉比一样。耶稣本人从未写下任何文字，没有一字一句用来赞美自己。这恰恰体现了耶稣极大的谦卑，与许多自我宣扬者截然不同。
如果耶稣亲自写下自己是上帝之子、自己行了哪些奇迹，那么从当时直到今天，恐怕没有多少人会相信这种“自我证明”。因此他只反复称自己为“人子”。
他的教导与行为由门徒和早期信徒群体保存，通过背诵、讲述与传承，在多年之后才被记录成文。
四部正典福音书——马太、马可、路加和约翰——是在不同地区、为不同对象、以不同神学重点写成的，彼此独立。耶稣的奇迹不仅由四位作者分别记载，更有成千上万的当代见证人。这么多人不可能集体说谎，更不可能在毫无政治利益的情况下编造同一套故事。
他们在核心事实上高度一致：耶稣医治病人，使瞎子看见，洁净麻风病人，赶逐污鬼，使死人复活。这些行为都是公开发生的，连反对者也没有否认事件本身，只是质疑其来源。
至于罗马官方，并非地方宗教事件的记录者。他们关心的是税收、治理与叛乱。耶稣能出现在塔西佗（Tacitus）、小普林尼（Pliny the Younger）和约瑟夫斯（Josephus）等罗马与犹太史家著作中，本身已是非常难得。这些作者并未否认耶稣“行奇事”的声誉，只是没有理由去详细记录加利利农民的医治故事。
斯宾诺莎是谁？
巴鲁赫·斯宾诺莎（Baruch Spinoza），又名本尼迪克特·斯宾诺莎，是17世纪荷兰哲学家，启蒙时代最重要的理性主义思想家之一。他生活在耶稣之后一千六百多年，并不具备任何第一世纪的历史材料。
斯宾诺莎的核心思想是：Deus sive Natura（“上帝即自然”）。在他看来，上帝不是超越世界、能介入世界的位格存在，而是自然本身的整体。
由此得出的结论是：自然律是不可改变的，所谓奇迹只是人类尚未理解自然原因的现象。
因此，斯宾诺莎否定奇迹，并非因为罗马档案证明奇迹不存在，而是因为他的哲学体系预设奇迹不可能发生。在他看来，上帝不可能“超越自己”行事。
换言之，斯宾诺莎对耶稣奇迹的否定，反映的是他的形而上学立场，而非任何历史研究。
休谟是谁？
大卫·休谟（1711–1776）是苏格兰哲学家，他对奇迹采取了不同路径。
休谟并未像斯宾诺莎那样直接否定奇迹的可能性，而是提出一种“概率论证”。他认为，奇迹是对自然规律的违背，而自然规律来自长期一致的人类经验。因此，从理性角度看，与其相信自然律被打破，不如相信见证人可能看错、被骗或说谎。
但常被忽略的是，休谟也承认：如果见证足够强、数量众多、彼此独立，且见证人愿意为此付出生命代价，那么相信奇迹在理性上是可能的。
休谟的论证不是科学否定，而是一种认识论提醒：非凡的主张，需要非凡的证据。
斯宾诺莎与休谟的区别
两人常被混为一谈，但本质上不同。
斯宾诺莎：哲学上彻底排除奇迹的可能性，上帝等同自然，奇迹在定义上不可能。
休谟：怀疑的是人类见证的可靠性，而非上帝的能力；奇迹不是不可能，只是极不可能。
两人都不是早期基督教的历史学家，也未研究医学案例、目击证词或考古证据。他们的结论源自哲学框架，而非实证研究。
奇迹与自然律
常有人说奇迹违反生物学、化学或物理定律，但这建立在一个误解之上：以为科学定律是“规定性的”，而非“描述性的”。
事实上，科学只是描述自然在正常条件下如何运作，并不宣告一切情况下只能如此。
医学界本身就承认：自然缓解、突发康复、机制不明的现象时有发生。医学不会说“这不可能”，而是说“目前无法解释”。
如果上帝是真实存在的创造者，那么自然律只是对受造界运行模式的描述，而非对造物主能力的限制。奇迹并非“违反自然”，而是自然之主的介入，就像程序员可以修改正在运行的程序，而不违背程序本身的逻辑。
从医学角度看奇迹
从医学视角看，福音书中的一些医治无法轻易忽略：先天性失明、瘫痪、严重麻风病、长期出血、甚至死亡。这些在古代都是明确可识别的疾病。
而且许多医治是即时发生的、公开的、在敌对环境中完成的，发生在怀疑者面前。
心理暗示或安慰剂效应或许能解释部分恢复，但无法解释使死人复活、使生来瞎眼的人立刻看见、或在数秒内治愈晚期麻风病。
现代医学可以解释“如何痊愈”，但无法裁定“谁不能超越现有机制”。
为什么罗马沉默不能否定奇迹？
“罗马没记录，所以奇迹不存在”是对历史的误解。罗马的沉默恰恰是预期中的结果。罗马只关心政治性事件，如耶稣的处决，而非地方宗教中的医治行为。
讽刺的是，正是这些奇迹传统在迫害、殉道、毫无政治利益的情况下仍被持续传承，反而更显示其真实性而非编造。
结论
斯宾诺莎与休谟都是伟大的哲学家，但没有任何一位能够裁定耶稣奇迹的历史真实性。
斯宾诺莎否定奇迹，是因为他的哲学体系排除了奇迹的可能性；他用“自然律”作为形而上前提。
休谟怀疑奇迹，是因为他不信任人类证词，而非否定上帝能力。
两人都未生活在一世纪的犹太地，也未像历史学家那样系统考察目击传统。
科学无法否定奇迹，因为科学研究的是可重复规律，而非独一无二的历史事件。
医学无法否认一切非凡医治，因为医学本身仍面对自身解释能力的边界。
最终，耶稣奇迹的问题，不是靠短视频或哲学口号就能解决的，而是处在历史、见证、经验与世界观的交汇点上。
信仰不要求人放弃理性，但理性必须承认自身权力的边界。
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