religion. I will say that a miracle that plays this role in a religion is an “effective
foundation” of that religion.
To be an effective foundation of a religion the miracle must actually happen, but it need
not be believed or known. There is no need for it to be “established” by testimony or in
any other way. Consequently, it seems unlikely that Hume was thinking of this way of
being a foundation when he formulated the second restriction of his conclusion. Perhaps,
indeed, Hume thought that the only religious function of miracles was that of providing
epistemic foundations. Or maybe the epistemic significance of miracles was the only
feature that interested him. But so far as I can see, there is no need for us to follow him in
this. And, of course, a miracle might be both an epistemic foundation and an effective
foundation of a religion.
Miracles, Probability, and Testimony
Could human testimony provide one with a good reason for believing that a miracle had
occurred? If a miracle were to serve an epistemic function, perhaps even being an
epistemic foundation of a religion, it might be necessary for the miracle itself to have
some positive epistemic status. It would need to be recognized as a miracle, believed,
known to have occurred, or something of the sort. (At the very end of this chapter I
suggest a possible exception to this generalization.) Hume speaks of giving a miracle an
epistemic status of this sort as “es
end p.312
tablishing” a miracle, and his essay deals only with the power of human testimony to
establish a miracle. But that might not be the only way a miracle might be established. At
least one other way comes immediately to mind. A person might personally witness a
miracle, and thus come to believe, or know, that the miracle had occurred. As we have
noted, the Gospels report that many people were witnesses of many of Jesus' miracles
(the healings, the resurrection of Lazarus, etc.), and in some of these people the miracles
generated a belief in Jesus. These miracles were, in part at least, the foundation of faith in
those people. But it would seem that these people did not need to rely on testimony to
believe in the reality of the miracles. They saw them for themselves, or so, at least, it
seemed to them.
Furthermore, unless there were people of this sort—witnesses, or at least professed
witnesses—there would be no testimony about miracles. For one who testifies to an event
must claim to have witnessed, or somehow experienced, the event. And so it would seem
that testimony could not be the primary and fundamental way in which a miracle could
acquire a positive epistemic status.
Hume, living long after Jesus, might have thought that none of his contemporaries could
have any basis for believing in the reality of a miracle other than testimonial evidence. He
puts into the mouth of a hypothetical “judicious reader” the observation that “such
prodigious events never happen in our days.” And he says that “if any civilized people
have ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received