Good stories do not use miracles to solve problems, the lore says, and they do not use miracles to solve problems because miracles, according to common wisdom, destroy a story’s stakes, rendering great thrillers into dramatic yawn-factories. Yet the great literature of the past is far from devoid of miracles. The pagan myths of history are fairly riddled with miracles, with magic both god-born and mannish (e.g. Daedalus). A more modern work, The Silmarillion, ends in a grand act of the gods (Tolkien, 240-241)¹. Most importantly, myriad stories in the Bible, the book authored by God Himself, include miracles in their climax or as an integral portion of their narrative, from Exodus to Matthew to Revelations. What, then, allows these stories to achieve literary merit and fame despite their reliance upon miracles? In truth, many stories couldn’t bear the weight of a miracle. For instance, if an Agatha Christie novel concluded with the revelation that an angelic hand had carved the killer’s name into the policeman’s truncheon, the plot twist would elicit the same emotional impact as a rotten tomato to the face. Some narratives, however, can go so far as to solve their primary plots with a miracle and actually benefit both logically and affectively. How do they achieve this? Provided that the setting justification and originative agent already exist within the story’s narrative logic, Divine miracles can solve even primary plot conflicts without detriment to the story’s quality.

Definitions

Before the question can be addressed in full, it must be understood. What is a ‘Divine miracle’? A Divine miracle is an act of God which is inconsistent with the standard patterns (laws) of nature. The key word here is ‘inconsistent’. Miracles are not different in essence from natural events: both ultimately originate in God’s active will (Westminster Assembly, Question 18). That one uses natural processes, themselves actively directed by God, and that the other does not matters only in appearance. Yet this appearance is essential to stories. Readers learn from the beginning of the story what to expect at the end, building a schema to understand the facts and emotions of the narrative; miracles, however, tend to lack precedence, a point which will be essential later. One distinction must be made, in order for the fullness of this essay to apply: the miracles in question here are not the acts of false or fictitious gods. These miracles are the miracles originating from the God of the Bible. In other words, the acts of the medium of Endor would not be regarded as miracles, however much they are extra-natural actions of a spiritual entity which desires worship (1 Samuel 28:8-14). Conversely, the miracles of Christ, the Ten Plagues, and the creation of the cosmos all fit this definition. One gray area does exist: in cases such as Tolkien’s legendarium where an entity exists analogous to God, as Eru does, miracles originating from this deity or his angelic subordinates can be considered to be under the umbrella of ‘Divine miracles’ by reason of the congruent metaphysical structures.

The second definition necessary to the thesis is ‘narrative logic.’ Like ‘Divine miracle,’ this term means precisely what it says: narrative logic is the causative network, the logic, of the story. More precisely, narrative logic is the mechanical working of the story (built upon formal logic), partially established by cultural expectations and genre convention, partially established by the story itself. For the first, in his inspection of the causal structure of plot, Goldknopf lays out several different tropes corresponding to different cultures, specifically linear causality, formal cause, radial causality, and field-theory (484). Generally stated, these theories are all paradigms of ‘how things are caused’- whether by one thing causing the next (linear causation), formalized genre demands (formal cause), the act of God through all elements of direct causation (radial causality), or by the confluence of innumerable factors (field theory) (484-845). Each time and culture has a preferred structure, though no culture depends entirely upon a single model, and all must bow to the basic principle of cause and effect (Goldknopf 484-5; Tierno 20,79; Ryan, 59-60). The second category, genre conventions, is culturally originated; genre conventions are the parts of the story which are accepted by the reader as a presupposition inherent to its genre and subgenre (Ryken 25). Magic systems in fantasy, realistic social repercussions in historical fiction, unrealistic legal procedures in superhero comics, all these are examples of elements the reader accepts in choosing to read the story. As a result of this acceptance, Chesterton indicated, “We believe that a Bean-stalk climbed up to Heaven” (Orthodoxy, Ch. 4). True, all of these conventions may be and have been subverted, but subversion of expectation requires established expectation. The reader accepts that these causative patterns are a part of the story as a function of its genre. The third and last category, the narrative logic established by the story itself, is the confluence of invoked tropes, tone, and individual causal character (the patterns of cause-and-effect the story establishes, both in the abstract and the concrete), which elements of the story, through manipulating the externally derived portion of narrative logic, allow the reader to predict the tenor of the story (often manifesting as an anticipation of some emotional result) (Tierno 56). These categories, then, coalesce into the mechanism through which the affective results of the story are produced, and this coalesced narrative logic is what allows the reader to determine what he ought to expect out of the story.

The Problem

The expectations which narrative logic produce form the center of the problem at hand. In a traditional pseudo-Deist novel, miracles do not proceed organically from the preceding part of the story; thereby they violate the reader’s established expectations, with disastrous results (Goldknopf 485-486; Sanderson, Lecture #2, 12:00-14:00, 42:30-43:30). After all, the reader naturally expects the pattern which the story establishes, at least in terms of causation, known facts (meta-fictional or otherwise), and tone, to carry forward through the rest of its body: as Tierno states, the beginning of the story creates the middle and the middle creates the end, a process which the reader will sometimes accept interruption of, provided that the interruption seems a probable result of the established setting (Sanderson, Lecture #2, 12:00-14:00, 42:30-43:30; 9; Ryan 60). Divine miracles are an interruption of this organic development because the conventional originative setting-character combination is not responsible for their occurrence. Adding a miracle to a story is like adding motor oil to oatmeal- possible, but entirely foreign to the patterns of palatable oatmeal. Therefore, just as the cook who attempts to analyze the oatmeal-motor oil combination will quickly realize that the motor oil has rendered the oatmeal unfit for purpose, so the reader who attempts to understand the setting and characters of the story in light of the miracle’s existence will find the setting incoherent and the characters without meaningful agency. Such realizations ring the death knell of a story. Ultimately, the reader extrapolates from the facts of the story and its established narrative logic (including setting coherence and character agency) what he can expect to happen; for the rules of setting and character to be altered, therefore, allows for terminally dangerous additions to the cadre of possibilities (Sanderson, Sanderson’s First Law; Hritzu 331).

The damage caused by miracles can be broken down into two parts: the damage to the setting and the damage to the characters. As referenced above, setting requires consistency and coherence. Tolkien knew this well; according to him, one of the most important elements of ‘secondary creation’- a process any story, however realistic, partakes in to the extent it is fictional- was inner consistency, an inner consistency derived from a correspondence to reality, which is itself perfectly consistent (On Fairy-Stories, Epilogue; Acts 17:11). The miracle, if not already incorporated into the fabric of the setting, as it is not in most well-known stories written after 1800, destroys this consistency, immediately destroying the danger of the conflict taking place within the affected setting. Danger is destroyed because the miracle, having solved a problem once, can solve a problem again, at least in the reader’s eyes (Ryan 64). Once the danger is ephemeral, so is the reader’s interest in it, and with that interest leaves all emotive force (Tierno 39; Ryan 64). Worse, even if the miracle never repeats, the reader will know that it could have; he will know that the only reason the evils of the story persisted was that the author wanted to artificially prolong them, when he could at any moment, by the rules established for his setting, have fixed them instantaneously (Ryan 64; Sanderson, Sanderson’s First Law). The damage to character, meanwhile, is no less severe. Characters require agency, particularly in the minds of the reader. The character must make the decisions: so long as this remains true, the story persists (regardless of the artificial nature of character agency, the maintenance of this illusion of narrative logic must verge towards perfect in the reader’s eyes, being fundamental to the reader’s acceptance of the secondary creation) (Hritzu 331; Tierno 65; Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories, Epilogue). The miracle, however, comes external to the characters and thereby renders their agency, while not necessarily null, meaningless. After all, why did they toil with such fervor if a single stroke of the deus ex litera can outmatch their every effort? The expectation that the characters originate the solution is thus instantly destroyed- and with it the moral and mechanical import of the character’s actions (Sanderson, Lecture #2, 12:00-14:00, 42:30-43:30). The miracle, to borrow Weales’s condemnation of The Police Revolver, allows the author “to avoid the issue that he has spent [so long] setting up”, to avoid the issue of allowing the character’s agency to determine the thematic and practical outcomes of the narrative (209; Ryan 64). By these means, a miracle destroys the setting’s coherence and the characters’ agency; by these means, a miracle destroys the story’s interest and power.

Solutions

Is then all hope lost? No. The deus ex machina, of which the Divine miracle is sometimes named a species, can be well used, as Ryan testifies to (64). Furthermore, as has already been noted, The Silmarillion, Gylfaginning, and the Bible all include miracles without destruction of their aesthetic merit. Indeed, that the Bible, the “most beautiful book in the world” according to famed skeptic H.L. Mencken, utilizes miracles so heavily implies with dictatorial force that miracles are not inherently detrimental to stories, that they are circumstantially beneficial (qtd. in Ryken 24). As Meyer’s judicial history illustrates, the same story told in two different ways produces radically different affective results, a central concern for the use of miracles and for the story as a whole (27; Ryken 15). That this works for fiction as well is plain, given that fiction is an imitation, a skewed duplication, of reality; the implication, then, is that miracles can benefit a story, but they require certain pre-conditions to do so (Tierno 72). What are these pre-conditions? The problems with miracles come in two parts- character agency and setting coherence. The solution, therefore, must correspond, must lie in the setting and character from which the plot derives.

Setting coherence is a necessary part of any story, regardless of whether that setting is historic, modern, fantastical, or eldritch (Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories, Epilogue). Miracles, therefore, must be integrated into the setting on a fundamental, presuppositional level; once this is accomplished, they may appear with impunity, albeit subject to the standard restriction imposed by character agency (as defined later) and the concerns of plot or theme. In other words, the solution to the setting coherence problem is to reproduce in the fictional world the active presence of God’s sovereign hand throughout the entirety of the setting, rendering miracles an uncovering of the deeper in-universe mechanics of the setting instead of a disruption of the presented narrative logic. In this paradigm, miracles are actions by God which do not conform to the standard natural pattern; everything else is an action by God which does conform to the standard natural pattern. They are not, therefore, fundamentally different. At their core, both are actions by God’s providence- one is just a lot more obvious about it. This solution is not unprecedented in literature by any means; as Goldknopf notes, the radial causality of the Medieval era posited that, “Rain did revive parched wheat, but whether or not the rain fell depended on God’s… will” (484). Of greater importance, though, is that this setting element is the truth of the world (Westminster Assembly, Q. 14,18). Tolkien noted that the means by which stories achieve consistency include the adoption of the precepts of reality, and the incorporation of this solution follows that principle (On Fairy-Stories, Epilogue). Furthermore, the proof that this new presupposition allows for miracles does not lie purely in its correspondence to reality. Sanderson’s First Law of Magic states, “An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic” (Sanderson’s First Law). This dictum applies to all elements of the setting, not just magic. Once the setting includes the expectation of the miraculous, the miraculous can solve problems, even large problems (though, again, character agency must be maintained). The incorporation of miracles into the logical fabric of the setting creates, therefore, a narrative logic in which miracles are permissible, being the unveiling of the common state of reality and not a divergence from it; a character-centric solution, however, is required in order to make miracles not just permissible but usable.

Coherence achieved, the next problem becomes the preservation of agency, and here the qualification of ‘miracle’ becomes important. Essentially, to make miracles a part of the character’s agency, make their agent a character; therefore, make God a character of the story, and all Divine miracles are acts of a character. Once again, this solution is a reflection of reality, which can only be a benefit in preserving the theological integrity of the fiction (Westminster Assembly, Q. 9). God is the agent underlying all which exists, and literature which recognizes this truth can have no issues with His miracles, save when one contradicts His true character, a problem which afflicts all characters, both created and derived. That characters must originate the solutions has already been shown; as Sanderson advises, when the characters encounter a difficulty, the author must ask, “How could the characters use what they already have and know to solve this conflict?” (Sanderson’s First Law). The tools which the characters possess are the tools which must solve the problem. Further, this attachment of miracles to the unchanging, externally derived nature of God solves one of the great issues of miracles: they can render any stakes phantasmagoric (Ryan 65; Sanderson, Sanderson’s First Law). In reality- and well-written fiction- God’s character defines which miracles are possible; this boundary provides a means for the reader to be sure that the story will not be immediately solved, that the characters will create the solution, particularly at a thematic level, as a miracle without weight of circumstance or without grave moral import would be incongruous with His character (Hritzu 331; Weales 209). More fully stated, because the God whose character defines these miracles is a God of beauty and glory (weightiness), for the miracle to enter the plot at a point lacking in either beauty or weight would be contradictory to the agency of God’s character within the story; this fact provides the reader with criteria of when to expect a miracle, while assuring him that the weight of the story will not be destroyed by deus ex machina (Ex. 24:16, Ps. 27:4; Weales 209). Fully understood, therefore, the importation of God into the story as a living and active character, a native and natural part of the narrative logic, renders the Divine miracle an act of character agency, not a violation thereof, and remedies the remaining great ills of the miracle (Heb. 4:12).

Real Life Examples

Repeatedly above the examples of the Gylfaginning, The Silmarillion, and the Bible itself have been offered as examples of miracle; the solutions offered, therefore, must surely find use within these works, if they are effective, and they do, because they are. In Sturluson’s The Prose Edda, the problem of how the gods are to escape their debt is solved by a sudden, unprecedented magic: Loki turns into a mare and thus distracts the stallion of the builder. This ability of his is not mentioned earlier in the book, but the event is not harmful to the setting coherence or character agency of the story. True, the question of escaping the debt might be with advantage resolved through wit and canny speech, but the question of Sleipnir’s origin would go unanswered, irreparably damaging the story’s purpose. Here, the fullness of the proposed solutions cannot be implemented, as the architecture of the story is intrinsically bound to Norse mythology, an inherently anti-Christian system. The bones of what renders the solutions viable, however, are still present. The setting and character elements can both be understood in inspecting Loki himself. Setting coherence is satisfied by the awareness any Norseman would have of the potential magic of the gods; true, few of them exhibit such reality-warping abilities as shapeshifting, but Odin himself was the god of magic, and for Odin’s near-brother, a trickster god, to use magic, would be nearly expected, even if the other stories in which he has used magic are unknown to the hearer. Furthermore, Loki’s character, at least in Sturluson’s construction of the myth, is centered around shaping the truth of words; to re-shape the truth of form is a step easily bridged in a world of myth. In regards to character agency, the story relies entirely upon it: Loki chooses to shapeshift, to accomplish a small-d divine miracle, out of his own character as a devious trickster (Sturluson 50-52). Thus, both setting coherence and character agency are preserved, in a manner which creates a narrative logic naturally originative of the resultant miracle.

The works of J.R.R. Tolkien, on the other hand, offer a much purer use of Divine miracle in the War of Wrath, in the destruction of Beleriand, in the overthrowing of Morgoth by the Valar. At the climax of The Silmarillion, the Valar, the agents of Eru Iluvatar, are petitioned by Eärendil the Mariner to come to Middle Earth in order to save the Noldor and their allies from utter destruction at the hands of Morgoth. The Valar consent, invading Beleriand, defeating Morgoth in a locally apocalyptic battle, and incidentally sinking essentially the entire setting of the Quenta Silmarillion into the ocean (Tolkien, Silmarillion xxi, 241). In the space of less than two pages, 240-241, Morgoth, the Satan analogue in the legendarium, is overthrown, utterly and completely; in just over two more pages, unifying plot of the story, the history of Fëanor’s jewels (and his sons), is terminated (242,243-244). In short, this story ends in a Divine miracle, whether the divinity is that of the Valar or of their master, Eru, a direct analogue to Yahweh (3). Yet this miracle too maintains setting coherence and character agency. The miracle is an action, after all, of established powers in the setting; more, it is an action of established Powers, of the Valar, whose wars- and reasons for refraining from war- the reader has already been made acquainted with (9-10, 23-25, 40-41). In other words, the motives of the characters and their abilities have been established; the miracles of the Valar, therefore, are actions originating from those motives through those abilities, actions which as a result of this origin are clearly consistent with the narrative logic of the story.

The greatest miracle of history, the greatest reversal of fortunes ever executed in or out of reality, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which might justly be called ‘The Divine Miracle’ (Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories, Epilogue). The resurrection from the dead of Christ Jesus the Lord was unequivocally miraculous; indeed, in any book less than true, it could easily be dubbed a deus ex machina. Yet, even setting aside the legitimacy granted by historicity, this act did not disrupt the setting coherence and character agency of the Bible; indeed, it was the culmination of both (Tierno 149-153). In terms of setting, not only did the Old Testament perpetually prophecy (foreshadow) the resurrection, in passages such as Psalm 16 and the book of Jonah, but the world mechanics which those books laid out were such as to naturally produce the miracle of Christ’s resurrection. Sin, after all, was what required death; sin was the original reason for death and death’s permanence (Lev. 4:1-12, Rom. 6:23). For a sinless man to die was a novelty, true, but the sin’s necessity to death was already established when Christ died. Therefore, when death failed to hold the Man who had no sin, it failed in precisely the way the Bible implied it should fail, given its nature (Gen. 3:19; Psalm 16:10). As for character agency, the death of Christ and His resurrection were alike actions of the Creator of the universe, who set it all in motion. God explicitly raised Christ from the dead, and any bosh which holds God to be aught but the protagonist of the entire Bible is, well, bosh. (Rom. 6:4; Gen. 1:1; Rev. 22:20-21). To the discerning eye, this miracle is superlatively consistent with the narrative logic of the world laid out in the Bible and in reality; it is, rightfully understood, the fitting climax of their entirety.

Conclusion

Despite their reputation, Divine miracles can be a part of a story without compromising setting coherence or character agency, so long as the setting incorporates the active sovereignty of God and presents the miracle as an action of a personal God who is Himself a character in the story. The possibility of miracles, however, is itself the least of the benefits of these truths when compared to the abiding beauty which they imbue into every element of the story, a reflection of the fact that, in the grand scheme of life, miracles are a mere festoon upon the riotous, purposeful grandeur of God and His creation. With just wonder the Psalmist says, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.” (Ps. 8:1). That God has created so wonderful a world and that He upholds it, instant by instant, moment by moment, out of the pure goodness and mercy of His will, that is the glory of these truths. Man should count himself blessed, therefore, that he has been given the opportunity to partake in and proclaim this truth, that every detail of creation testifies, “God wills this,” even when it would out of hate say otherwise (Jas. 2:19). Miracles arrive in the train of this beauty as a manifestation of the glory of God stripped of its natural pretense, and the miracle which man most often sees, which he most often ignores, is the miracle of salvation. To the eye of the wise, that God should so alter the unrepentant heart of man that he turns and honors his Creator is a mercy and a miracle apprehensible but not comprehensible (Rom. 3:23; Westminster Assembly, Q. 30). This, the most mundane of miracles, appears in literature unremarked, continually evading the condemning label of ‘deus ex machina’. In truth, why should it be condemned? The tenor of reality calls for repentance and salvation; the character of God demands it. Ultimately, however, the narrative logic necessary for this miracle- the active, intentional sovereignty of God- precipitates the possibility of any miracle consonant with God’s character, and therefore, because the story which denies the possibility of the miracle of conversion has lost perhaps the greatest of the glories it might reflect, miracles must become an integral, if sometimes unexpressed, part of all Christian fiction.

Works Cited:

Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy. E-book ed., Catholic Way Publishing, 2014. Accessed 25 September 2022.

ESV Study Bible. Crossway, 2016.

Goldknopf, David. “What Plot Means in the Novel.” The Antioch Review, 29.4 (1969-1970): 483-496.

Hritzu, John N. “The ‘Deus Ex Machina’ in Schiller’s ‘Wilhelm Tell’.” Monatshefte für Deutschen Unterricht, 35.6 (1943), 331-333.

Meyer, P. N. “Complexities of Character: How trials are more like plot-driven movies than character-driven novels.” ABA Journal, 101.8 (2015). 26-27

Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Cheap Plot Tricks, Plot Holes, and Narrative Design.” Narrative, 17.1 (2009): 56-75.

Ryken, Leland. How to Read the Bible as Literature. Zondervan Publishing House, 1984.

Sanderson, Brandon. Lecture #2: Plot Part 1 — Brandon Sanderson on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy [Video]. YouTube, 2020, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrIogch5DBU>. Accessed 2 October 2022.

Sanderson, Brandon. “Sanderson’s First Law.” Brandonsanderson.com, 2007, <https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/>. Accessed 2 October 2022.

Sturluson, Snorri. The Prose Edda. Trans. Jesse Byock, Penguin Classics, 2005.

Tierno, Michael. Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters. Hyperion, 2002.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy-Stories.” Tales from the Perilous Realm, E-book ed., Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008.

Footnote

1 – This is a college essay on miracles in fiction that I wrote recently. Even if you can’t access all the sources (a.k.a. the academic papers and the books), the content is still valid. Some formatting changes have been made for online publication.