Miracles

An objection to miracles was one of the classic arguments against religion made from the eighteenth century onwards. God suspending the natural laws of creation – doing directly what he would generally accomplish by intermediaries – is, or so the argument goes, somehow beneath his dignity, faintly vulgar and show-offish. Knox on the other hand insists that, for him at any rate, the Gospel miracles are necessary for believing that Jesus was indeed God made man. The frequently made argument that someone claiming to be divine must be “mad, bad, or God” is for Knox unpersuasive; only signs of the type promised to accompany the Messiah – miracles of healing, in fact – serve to convince. He also considers miracles happening today, and how they differ from the extraordinary phenomena recorded by spiritualists and parapsychology. Knox’s characteristic style combines wit, telling example, and a high degree of logical argument cast into everyday terms.