Philosophy of Religion Research
Miracle is a Suitable Way for Proving the Truth of Prophecy: A Critique on the Paper “Why Miracles Cannot Prove the Truth of Prophecy?”
Document Type : Original Research
Author
Associate Professor, Department of Kalam, Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, Qom, Iran.
Abstract
This article is a critique of the paper "Why Miracles Cannot Prove the Truth of Prophecy?” (Anvari, 2023), which was written with a glance at the views of al-Ghazali, Averroes, and Mulla Sadra. For example, in criticizing the statement that “faith through miracles is the faith of ordinary people and one must believe in a prophet through intuition”, it should be said that since God has sent miracles along with the prophets, it shows that he wants people to believe in the truth of the prophet's claim through those miracles. Therefore, faith through miracles is correct. In addition, the strength of faith is not necessarily dependent on the strength of evidence through which one reaches that faith. In criticizing that “there is no correlation between a miracle and the claim of prophecy”, it should be said that a miracle is considered proof that a specific human is representative and messenger of God Almighty, so if an act is proven to be a miracle, the prophecy of that man is proven. Also, the statement that “there is no practical way to set apart miracles from non-miracles”, leads to denying Quran and other well-known miracles as miracles. In addition, based on the fact that a miracle is always accompanied by a claim of divinity and also according to the demonstration of Divine wisdom, it is possible to distinguish miracles from non-miracles. The author proposed spiritual resemblance to the prophet and also the examination of his teachings as means to verify the truth of an alleged prophecy. However, no criterion has been provided to determine the necessary amount of resemblance to a person. Moreover, even if this resemblance is realized, how it merely can prove the prophecy of a person? It seems that paying attention to the exclusive conditions and features mentioned for miracles and having in mind the demonstration of Divine wisdom can solve the problems in terms of how miracles can prove the truth of prophecy.
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