Does God Break the Laws of Nature?
Back in 2021, the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding invited five scholars to write articles in answer to the question, “Does God break the laws of nature when he acts in the world?”
My contribution was entitled “An Invitation to Answer No,” and I gave three reasons for a negative answer:
- On a classical theistic view, God’s acts are the foundation for such laws and thus there can be no real conflict between divine acts and laws of nature.
- The laws of nature when properly qualified cannot be “broken” even by extraordinary divine acts.
- If we don’t think that human acts in the world break laws of nature, then we shouldn’t think that divine acts in the world do so.
Why is this important? Partly because one common objection to Christian theism is that supernatural divine acts (e.g., the parting of the Red Sea, the resurrection of Jesus) would involve God “breaking the laws of nature” and that would be, if not outright impossible, a Bad Thing. But more generally, it matters because the idea that God ‘breaks’ the laws of nature is often based on misunderstandings about (1) what laws of nature actually are and (2) God’s relationship to laws of nature.
If you read the whole thing, be sure to check out the contributions by the other four scholars (Peter Harrison, Barbara Drossel, Jeffrey Koperski, and Steven Horst) along with Hans Madueme’s introductory article.