Talk:Christian views on magic

Exorcism /is/ magic, if not why not?

I don't understand why practices like exorcism and prayer healing would not be counted as magic from an objective point of view. It seems to me lots of what we call "magic" amounts to invoking a deity to do tasks for us, and this appears to me all over Christianity, but i did a search and the word is not even mentioned on the page. Seems a glaring omission, unless i just don't understand what magic is. Take prayers themselves... take baptism... Why does this page not even mention these things, as if all these Christian rituals are not to be classified in the same way as the non-Christian ones, can we make a definition of magic to justify that? I actually came here hoping to see some information on actual Christian magic, which to my mind includes exorcism. At the top it talks about some "esoteric Christianity" which actually has magic which sort of implies most Christianity doesn't, that's definitely news to me... as if what? Is it part of the definition of the word that mainstream practices must be excluded? Maybe this page just needs a better definition of the term or its intended use here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.145.35.24 (talk) 05:07, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

POV Check

I would really appreciate any comments regarding the neutrality of this article. I have made a lot of changes to it since the POV-check tag was added, but my knowledge of the subject is limited, and there aren't a lot of acedemic resources on the Internet on the subject (lots of propoganda though :-)). And, I did not write much of its content, and don't know where the information came from. I have cut out the things that to me were clearly biased. But, I it would be very helpful to have other's perspectives as to what neutrality issues remain, besides the fact that it needs quite a few more sources. There are also many things on the subject the article does not cover, which in and of itself could be a neutrality issue. Nimrand 18:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I should have thought of this earlier, but this article could perhaps be greatly improved by renaming it Christian views on magic. As it currently stands this article is hampered by multiple widely-varying and poorly specified definitions of "witchcraft", which is a much more complex concept than "magic". Witchcraft could be an earth-based pagan religion; it could be a pact with diabolical forces; it may or may not involve the practice of magic; its practitioners may or may not exist purely in the realms of fantasy! This article would be more interesting and useful if it took a wider look at magic, and discussed witchcraft from within that context. "Witchcraft" is such a loaded and difficult term, most academic historians tend to avoid it wherever possible, instead talking about "sorcerers", "magicians" etc!

Also, there's lots of interesting ground to cover regarding magic within Christianity: the difference between "miracle" and "magic", what/when magic is diabolical, and so on. These are topics that the article is currently heading towards, but can't really be discussed because these practices are not normally termed "witchcraft" when practiced within a Christian faith, even by those who disapprove. I think a name change would make the article more interesting and easier to understand. The specifics of the term "witchcraft" are better dealt with in Witchcraft and Witch-hunt. Fuzzypeg☻ 05:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

That makes a lot of sense. We might have to completely reorganize the article, but I think its the right move.Nimrand 18:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Multiple Translations of the Bible Verses

As I explained in my edit comment, having 20 or so translations of the same verse adds nothing to this article; particularly since most of them are almost identical. Two or three at the very most would be sufficient. A more useful use of that space would be a well-cited discussion regarding the translation issues surrounding that verse.Nimrand 14:27, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I also want to point out that the focus on the bible verses and imposing of a particular POV based on those verses (rather than providing well-cited information regarding the topic of the article) that nearly got this article deleted a few months back.Nimrand 18:14, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

I propose renaming this article Christian views on magic.

Most of this article is relevant to Christian views on magic, rather than witchcraft in any narrow sense. The one section that focuses particularly on the phenomenon of "witchcraft", as it was termed during the witch-trial period, is largely lifted from the Witch-hunt article, and better dealt with there.

As I expressed earlier on this talk page, the term witchcraft is immediately problematic, since it has so many quite distinct definitions for different people; any discussion of witchcraft will have difficulty being anything more than a discussion of what different groups think the word means (which we already have in the Witchcraft article). We had a small section regarding this problem in this article, but I removed it because it was quite incorrect, based on a misunderstanding of the cited source. I couldn't figure out how to salvage anything from it.

Where this gets really interesting though, is when we start considering what Christian views on magic are. "Witchcraft" certainly comes into this discussion, but we will be at less pains to present that term as it is understood by all different parties; we also get to touch on the interesting subject of what separates certain rituals of Christianity from magic, what the difference is between miracle and magic, etc. It just seems that this name change would allow much freer discussion without constantly stumbling over terminology and trying to avoid passing the boundaries of the term "witch", a term that has many narrow definitions but few broad ones. Fuzzypeg☻ 22:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we will have to eventually reorganize much of the article due to the renaming, but I believe it will be for the best.Nimrand 02:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the article needs to be renamed, but am less than enthusiastic about the choice of the word magic. I would suspect that most people probably associate the word magic with stage magic and suspect that using that term may simply create another sort of problem with the title. Perhaps sorcery or conjuring or something along those lines might be more accurate? Labyrinth13 20:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

How about Christian views on magic and the occult? And even if most people (other than anyone who has ever had experience with a fantasy novel or RPG) think of magic as rabbit-out-of-a-hat sleight of hand, there are some Christian denominations that oppose that too -- I can't remember which ones, but I do remember being pamphletted back in university. --SigPig |^{SEND - OVER} 21:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

This is getting more and more problematic, isn't it? I mean, the word occult is a bit loaded and can mean different things to different people. It really is beginning to appear to me that since the subject of this entry is covered already in other Wikipedia entries (as noted by Fuzzypeg above), that it might just be a candidate for merging elsewhere or even deletion? Just a thought. Labyrinth13 21:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

If it were to be merged, the most appropriate place would be Magic and religion. I don't share your concerns about the term "magic", since in the context of Christianity or religion it seems fairly clear what it's referring to. But regardless, a merge may be appropriate, as long as we don't mind making that article a bit top-heavy in its Christianity section... Fuzzypeg☻ 00:46, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Disagree with move: This article currently talks about witchcraft. Christian views on magic could be a notable article, but it would have entirely different content than this article.--Kevinkor2 01:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree with move: I still think the move is appropriate. Firstly, I doubt the term will cause confusion, particularly since there already Wikipedia articles that use the term "Magic" broadly. Also, I have to disagree with Kevinkor2. The whole point is that the current title forces the article to stay within the topic of the amorphously defined term "Witchcraft". Changing the name to "Magic", which includes "witchcraft", will allow a much broader and comprehensive treatment of the topic.Nimrand 03:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree with move On further consideration and reading the other comments here, changing to magic seems to be the better choice. Using the term witchcraft can too easily be misconstrued as being biased toward certain religious beliefs or taking an anti-Wicca or anti-Pagan stance (adherents of those religions often practice what they call witchcrat). Using the word magic seems less loaded and confusing. Labyrinth13 13:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Terminology Problem

Fuzzypeg, what part of the text did I misunderstand or misrepresent? Here is some of the text that can be found in from the article I cited:

"Many Wiccans believe that their religion goes back to pre-Christian times in North-Western Europe, and that the witch hunts that culminated in the Great Witch Hunt of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constituted a persecution of their religion, a Christian attempt to eradicate their religion and culture. They identify themselves with those who died in the Great Witch Hunt in much the same way as Christians identify themselves with the martyrs who died in the persecutions of Decius, Diocletian or Stalin; or as Jews identify themselves with those who were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. This view is derived mainly from Margaret Murray's book The witch cult in Western Europe (cited by Hutton above). Murray, an Egyptologist, asserted that there was a witch cult that represented a pre-Christian religion in Europe; that Christianity was accepted only by the upper classes in society, and that the witch cult continued underground until it was violently eradicated in the Great Witch Hunt. Between the 1930s and the 1960s Murray wrote the article on "witchcraft" in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and so long after her views had been rejected by specialists in the field, they were accepted by non-specialists.3 As Hutton (1991:335) notes:

By assuming that witchcraft and paganism were formerly the same phenomenon, they (Wiccans) are mixing two utterly different archaic concepts and placing themselves in a certain amount of difficulty. The advantage of the label "witch" is that it has all the exciting connotations of a figure who flouts the conventions of normal society and is possessed of powers unavailable to it, at once feared and persecuted. It is a marvellous rallying-point for a counter-culture, and also one of the few images of independent female power in early modern European civilization. The disadvantage is that by identifying themselves with a very old stereotype of menace, derived from the pre-Christian world itself, modern pagans have drawn upon themselves a great deal of unnecessary suspicion, vituperation and victimization which they are perpetually struggling to assuage."

Nimrand 01:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The section I removed claimed that modern religious witchcraft "combines elements of both paganism and witchcraft, two things which were entirely separate at the time the Bible was written." "Paganism" is a slightly unfortunate choice of words in the cited article, being highly interpretable (much like the term "witchcraft"); in this historical sense we can probably assume it means either "non-Abrahamic religion" or "non-Roman" religion. So, apparently, religion and witchcraft were entirely separate in biblical times.

But what the cited article actually says is that "religion" and "witchcraft" are not synonyms, not that they have no relationship. For comparison, try the statement "farming and ploughing were entirely separate in biblical times" — clearly false. Farming is not ploughing and ploughing is not farming; also, farming may not (and often does not) involve ploughing; but the two are not "separate". The Missionalia article is saying that modern witches tend to treat witchcraft and paganism as synonyms, that the old paganism of Europe was witchcraft and modern witchcraft is merely a survival of this old religion. (I note that this old theory of Murray's is no longer a common view amongst witches...)

I'd like to try to explain a little further why this statement stuck out like a sore thumb to me:

Both history and modern anthropology gives us many examples demonstrating that while religion may not involve sorcery, sorcery is almost invariably built on religious world-views, to the extent that for magical practitioners, the religion and the sorcery are so deeply intertwined they are virtually indistinguishable. "Biblical times" is not mentioned in the cited article, but one would expect things to be roughly the same then as in any other pre-scientific, pre-industrial society. A few scholars like Hutton (cited in the Missionalia article) have claimed that historically there was no European witchcraft (note: not than that the old witchcraft was distinct from Paganism); however he and his ilk are minority voices in the field, and the growing consensus (Eva Pocs, Gustav Henningsen, Bengt Angkarloo, E. William Monter, Carlo Ginzburg, etc) is that remarkably widespread witchcraft beliefs conforming to the "witchcraft" stereotypes existed across Europe, and that they originated in old beliefs regarding relationships between the living and the dead, humans, gods and spirits, etc. They did not originate in the hysteria, torture and leading questions of the witch trials, although they were partly shaped by them. The beliefs are not generally described as "belief systems" rather than "religion" or "paganism" in the scholarly works, since the latter terms have their own specific colourings, but it would clearly be misleading to say that "paganism and witchcraft" or "religion and witchcraft" were entirely separate in ancient times.

Another quibble with what was written: The wording that appeared in the removed section of this article implied (in mildly patronising terms) that suggesting a connection between "paganism" and witchcraft was a modern "complication", presumably by Wiccans and other modern witches who arbitrarily decided to recast the term "witchcraft" to suit their own needs. As I've tried to show above, this is not a new "complication", and despite the popularity of Hutton's books, the jury is still out on whether modern witchcraft is a complete invention or whether it inherits from the older witchcraft and cunning-folk traditions throughout Europe. Fuzzypeg☻ 03:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Hutton did not say that there was no European witchcraft (at least not as far as I can recall -- it's some time since I've read his books). If I recall correctly, what he did say was that the "witchcraft" of the Great European Witchhunt was not the survival of an old religion, as Margaret Murray had claimed. I think he acknowledged that witchcraft was found earlier in Europe, and quotes Fox to that effect.

SteveH 08:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I've simplified my representation of Hutton for the above comment. As I have understood his work he treated the term "witchcraft" as referring to a fairly strictly Murrayist model of a witch cult; large scale organisation or at least continuity of beliefs and practices across large areas; a single pagan religion organised into groups (perhaps of 13). For any magical practice that doesn't fit into this rather rigid model he is at pains to use other terms, such as calling English sorcerers "cunning-folk", and even Italian stregheria he translates as "cunning-craft" (the normal translation is "witchcraft"). He does talk about pagan religion a little more freely, although he doesn't define what he means by "paganism". I believe he allows that there were a few remote areas of Europe where pagan religions still persisted in a small degree by the Early Modern Age (the start of the great "witch trial" period), but he claims that in most of Europe these beliefs were long extinct, and that not a single person accused of witchcraft during the period of the trials was a practitioner of a pagan religion. By that he is claiming that these were ordinary Christians who, perhaps because they were socially marginalised, suffered some psychiatric complaint, or for any number of reasons, became targets of the witchcraft hysteria.

In other words, Hutton is saying that at least by the time of the witch trials there was no "witchcraft" that contributed to the witch craze; but he uses the term "witchcraft" so gingerly that (if I recall correctly) he doesn't apply it to any historical group before the 20th century.

The other point of view I mention (Pocs, Henningsen, et al.) is that there were indeed widespread and remarkably consistent beliefs relating to magic, out-of-body travel, the spirits of the dead, cursing and blessing, shape-changing, controlling fertility, etc throughout Europe before and during the witch-trials period, that these beliefs were of pre-Christian origin, and that these beliefs were instrumental in helping give shape to the diabolised sabbath stereotype of the trials. These researchers don't actually state these people were "pagans", and the word "witch" is also used carefully, since these two terms have inexact definitions and carry a lot of baggage with them, but the picture painted is still pretty clear... Fuzzypeg☻ 22:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Some sources for development of the article

I'm just recording some hopeful looking sources here so I or anyone else can sift them for good info. More may come later.

• Pagan-Christian Conflict over Miracle in the Second Century by Harold Remus
• Magic, Miracles and the Gospel by L. Michael White
• Henry Maguire (ed.) (1995) Byzantine Magic: Introduction; 1. "Fathers of the Church and the Evil Eye" by Matthew W. Dickie; 2. "The Archaeological Context of Magic in the Early Byzantine Period" by James Russel; 3. "Magic and the Christian Image" by Henry Maguire; 4. "Holy and Unholy Miracle Workers" by Alexander Kazhdan; 5. "Reactions of Two Byzantine Intellectuals to the Theory and Practice of Magic: Michael Psellos and Michael Italikos" by John Duffy; 6. "Balsamon on Magic: From Roman Secular Law to Byzantine Canon Law" by Marie Theres Fögen; 7. "A Contribution to the Study of Palaeologan Magic" by Richard P. H. Greenfield; 8. "Magic in Slavia Orthodoxa: The Written Tradition" by Robert Mathiesen; Abbreviations; Index.

Fuzzypeg☻ 00:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• The Healing of the Hemorrhaging Woman: Miracle or Magic? by Donald Howard Bromley

Fuzzypeg☻ 00:34, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Should a Christian Do Magic? An interesting analysis of stage magic by "Gospel magicians" who preach with the aid of sleight of hand and ventriloquism! Fuzzypeg☻ 02:10, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Christian mysticism

I would like to hear opinions about the part of the article that refers to Paul and John as mystics. The article on mysticism states that mysticism is "the pursuit of achieving communion or ... conscious awareness of ... God through direct experience." To my knowledge the orthodox view is that God initiated the visions that Paul and John had. If anything, God was in pursuit of them. I think identifying Paul and John as mystics implies that they were seeking truth on their own accord and not relying on God.

Further, the mysticism article states, "The purpose of mystical practices is to achieve that oneness in experience, to transcend limited identity and re-identify with the all that is." Nowhere have I heard that Paul and John were trying to achieve oneness with God or that they considered themselves anything other than reliant on God. Paul even referred to himself as a "bondservant."

In my opinion, Paul and John do not fit the definition of "mystics," and this portion of the article should be removed.

"I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: 'Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.'" Revelation.--174.6.25.89 (talk) 08:33, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Archive

I've gone ahead and moved all the old discussions (pre-2007) into an archive. A few replies from 2007 got mixed in, but all topics created from Jan 2007 to now are still on this page. If anyone wants to continue a discussion from the archive, please start a new topic here. Do not edit the archive itself! -- Kesh 02:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

This article should be rewritten with a open mind

After reading this article I conclude that it was written a christian who believes in magic. This article is heaviely biased and even more unprofessional than my grammar. It should be deleted or completely deleted, it does not contain any useful information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.129.112.3 (talk) 23:28, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

That's extremely vague, and also incorrect that it "does not contain any useful information." Do you have specific issues with the article we can work on? -- Kesh 23:38, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this article sometimes refers to christians as inmune to magic because jesus defeated evil, I dont think jesus ever defeated magic, if you can add sources to the claims maybe the information will be useful, because this article says Christians this christians that... it's written like propaganda. It's not written with a neutral sense in mind. Also, you should note that magic does not exist... it's the truth, or at least say that it has never been proven to exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.129.112.3 (talk) 21:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I honestly don't know what the hell you're talking about. It does not say "jesus defeated the devil" or anything close to that. Yes, magic doesn't exist. That doesn't mean some Christians stop believing in it. This article is about those beliefs. -- Kesh 23:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the first paragraph of the introduction says something along that lines. It does need a citation, but I do remember reading/hearing about early Christians believing they were immune to magic, so I think it may be accurate. In any case, this article is about Christian's beliefs about magic. I don't think it implies that magic actually exists, which would be POV to assert (as would implying that it doesn't exist). However, since someone has complained about it, we may want to clarify it in this regard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nimrand (talk • contribs) 03:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

"Christian" Occult Groups & Sects

I think some mentioning of "Christian" occult groups or groups influence by Christianity should be mention in the article. Such as Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism (Neo), Mormonism (as some would argue they lean torwards certian occult practices), occult organizations such as "The Order of the Golden Dawn", Freemasonary, Martinism etc. All of which claim to be either Christian (esoterically that is) or Christian influenced. Essentially many view themselves as being Christian and do not view their practices as being perjorative "witchcraft" but view their practices as being align with biblical teachings (note: this is how THEY view themselves & I'm not saying they are right or wrong on the subject matter).

There are also sects (which of course most mainstream Christain view as herectical) practicing- practices which are seen to be occult influence. eg Appalachian Mountain Pentecostal poisonous snake dancing & strychnine groups/churches. (Christian Science- healing & Mormonism should be included as well. So should Pennsylvania Dutch "Pow Wow" doctors. Catholic exorcism etc etc)

Also note worthy are the various Christian influence occult books (grimoires)used by these practitioners or sects such as: "The Long Lost Friend" by John George Hohman "The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses" author unknown

I feel the article is missing a great deal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry123ifa (talk • contribs) 22:30, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Christianity itself is an occult group. And the whole concept of religion is based on magic. This article is a very strange construct indeed, and I fail to see its relevance. ♆ CUSH ♆ 17:38, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Serious sourcing problem

While I think a neutral POV is being preserved here, I'm concerned at the proliferation of text without any sources. If paragraphs with no source were removed here, there'd be almost no article left! I propose to do exactly this in a few days time, to give folks a bit of leeway to support this article. But at present it has too much WP:ESSAY and WP:OR and it really needs cleaning out and rebuilding from sources. Kim Dent-Brown ^(Talk) 12:53, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, the article fails to make a clear definition of its own subject matter in the first place. What is "magic"? How is "magic" different from "miracles" in Christianity? Why does Christianity make such a distincion? And of course RS are required to explore the subject. ♆ CUSH ♆ 14:01, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

What?

Can someone clarify the subject matter of this article? How are the miraculous deeds of biblical characters different from magic? Christianity is based on magic, so this article is nothing but religions POV-pushing. ♆ CUSH ♆ 11:52, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

You are confused, and I will not draw on Christian distinctions to correct you. Drawing on rabbinical teachings, the difference between miracles and magic is that miracles are God exploiting natural laws in fantastic ways, but magic consists of violating natural laws. Practitioners of magic would also claim that the magician acts outside of their natural limits (unless they don't believe in natural limits), which is a non-issue for any being who is supposed to be all-powerful. Now, if this article was "Christian views on the supernatural," you would have something. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

You are wrong. Miracles are defined as the suspension of natural laws, i.e. violating the very fabric of the universe. Same goes for Magic. There is no real distinction between miracles in religious contexts and magic in religious and non-religious contexts. Incantations (e.g. speaking things into existence), turning substances into other substances, resurrecting people, etc are all applications of supernatural forces. The only distinction between Miracles and Magic is who performs them. The "good" folks work Miracles while the "evil" folks do Magic. The point is that believing in Miracles or Magic and setting one against the other represents a complete detachment from reality. Jesus performing Miracles and Harry Potter doing Magic are the same kind of insubstantial fantastical stories. "Christian views on magic" is more like frauds accusing other frauds of fraud. Wikipedia should not push such nonsense. It is misinformative and unencyclopedic. ♆ CUSH ♆ 10:07, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you going to go to the Kashrut article and insist that pork and shellfish can be made sanitary? When someone states that those foods are unclean within a Jewish context, will you accuse them of pushing a Jewish POV on the encyclopedia? Your modern secular emic view is not an etic view, and this article is about etic observations of Christian emic views. And now I bring sources, so that I can call your statements unsourced original research.

If you are not, you have shown that you are here to POV push at least as much as Christian fundamentalists.

Miracle and magic: a study in the Acts of the Apostles and the life of Apollonius of Tyana, by Andy Melford Reimer, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002: "Howard Clark Kee offers us a classic example of biblical scholarship taking up this framework in Medicine, Miracle and Magic in New Testament Times. Kee equates 'medicine' with 'science' and then proceeds to define 'miracle' and 'magic' in a way that clearly echoes the statements of Frazer and Malinowski.

Miracle embodies the claim that healing can be accomplished through appeal to, and subsequent action by the gods, either directly or through a chosen intermediary agent. Magic is a technique, through word or act, by which a desired end is achieved, whether that end lies in the solution to the seeker's problem or in damage to the enemy who has caused the problem.

Simply put, magic is manipulative; miracle, which is an aspect of religion, is supplicative." -P.5

The rest of the work points out the faults found in defining both as the same (as it imperialistically imposes modern cultural values on ancient cultures instead of viewing their beliefs in context), and finds that differences between miracle workers and magicians lie in personal ambition (miracle-workers give up on themselves to further their deity's will, magicians use their own power for their own means), and that the miracle worker at least seeks legitimacy in the established religion (even if they do not find it); while the magician eschews religious tradition.

The Old Testament miracle-workers in early Judaism, by Erkki Koskenniemi, Mohr Siebeck, 2005: "David Hume formulated possibly the most famous modern definition [...] A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. But even that is very problematic in the study of the early Jewish material. The idea of the laws of nature as separate from God's almighty power is seldom even alluded to in the Jewish texts. Generally there are no laws to be broken by an unusual event. God's help may come in a very natural way and still be praised as his "miracle." [...] Some miracles are perhaps interpreted "rationalistically" in part of the tradition, but does a natural explanation mean that the writer has not believed in miracles? [...] Eric Eve suggests a new terminology, reserving the word "miracle" for the biblical phenomenon and using the concept "anomaly" for a supposed exception to the laws of nature." -pp. 1-2

Hume's abject failure: the argument against miracles, by John Earman, Oxford University Press, 23 Nov 2000 discusses how David Hume's definition stumbles, as he fail to deal with weird events that exploit natural laws (or marvels), and how these marvels are not miracles. There's also the logical inconsistancy a being who created natural laws would somehow violate them: either the natural laws weren't laws, or the bore the proviosio "except in cases of divine intervention," or that the effect could not just be accomplished through a marvel (which, as Koskenniemi establishes, are labelled miracles in the Bible).

The Jewish context of Jesus' miracles, by Eric Eve, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002: "A biblical 'miracle' is not a 'transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent'. It is rather a strikingly surprising event, beyond what is regarded as humanly possible, in which God is believed to act, either directly or through an intermediary. All creation is thought to be under God's control; a miracle occurs when God chooses to exercise that control in an unusual fashion."

The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, by Graham H. Twelftree, Cambridge University Press, 30 Apr 2011 explains how miracles were seen as a means of a deity to establish him- or herself, and to establish places of worship. It explains earlier that "in its most general sense, a miracle is something quite unusual or unexpected" (p.19), and that in a religious context it refers specifically to those events when caused by the intentional activity of a supernatural being; and distinguishes miracles from magic on the basis that the miracle worker has a personal relationship with the supernatural being rather than a controlling one.

Ian.thomson (talk) 16:10, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm open minded to a use of the term "magic" that is different than the one that comes to my mind, but I think there's going to be a lot of people coming here expecting a usage similar to mine and user Cush's. Its not enough to clarify on the talk page, the article itself needs to clarify for us. I also wish your clarifications were better, but if this is the best you can do, fine, put it ion the page. Honestly, from an outside observers point of view, it still really seems like a distinction without a difference to justify treating sanctioned Christian activity differently than others. If this is the best anyone can do, then perhaps we should also find sources for criticism of this as a double standard if they are out there, in order to adhere to more fully adhere to the spirit NPOV.107.145.35.24 (talk) 05:22, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

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ACIM

According to A Course In Miracles, all magic is an illusion. You decide if you want that included here. Be bold, not reckless. Michael Ten (talk) 02:05, 20 March 2018 (UTC)