Cessationism, a popular Christian doctrine, states that divine miracles, such as recorded in the New Testament, ceased to occur during or shortly after the Apostolic Era. Cessationist sentiment traces back to the early church period but escalated significantly in the sixteenth century with the Reformation and rise of Protestantism. Historians have explained both the history of cessationism and, to a lesser extent, its implications and interactions with later movements, such as eighteenth-century miracle skepticism and the Enlightenment (Heyd 1995, 176, 180). Less attention has been paid, however, to the relationship between cessationism and the rise of modern evolutionary thought. This despite the fact that (i) cessationism was at the center of a paradigm shift in how the natural relates to the supernatural that Carlos Eire (2023, 60) has argued “was equal in magnitude to the rejection of the geocentric cosmos by Copernicus and Galileo,” and (ii) that modern evolutionary theory itself brought about a similar shift of enormous magnitude.

Here, I explore the parallels, anticipations, and relationships between cessationism and evolution, and I warn against two misconceptions: first, that evolution is a scientific theory and as such is aloof of such theological influences, and second, that evolutionary thought—claiming the world arose naturalistically, without the need for miraculous intervention—would be an obvious result of a movement that resulted in increased skepticism of miracles. For the first misconception, there clearly are anticipations in cessationism and echos within the evolution literature that suggest a historical connection. For the second misconception, though a smoking gun can be found (such as Charles Darwin rebuking miracles to defend his theory of evolution), parallels of cessationism in the evolution literature are far richer, more complex, and arguably more influential than mere brute miracle skepticism.

At a foundational level, the cessationism/miracle skepticism paradigm shift provided various theological and philosophical themes and arguments against miracles. It is these themes—more often than an overarching, brute conclusion that miracles are impossible—that appear as substrates upon which evolutionary arguments are constructed. In particular, this article suggests three such parallel relationships. First, cessationism’s recruitment of natural philosophy as an antidote to Enthusiasm, and evolution’s intellectual necessity argument. Second, cessationism’s guilt-by-association argument, and evolution’s infra dignitatem argument. And third, cessationism’s divine parsimony argument, and evolution’s greater god theology. In this article, I review the history of these associated elements within cessationism and evolution, revealing parallels and interactions.

For two thousand years Christians have wondered if the types of miracles recorded in the New Testament were normative and could potentially occur at any time or if they were particular to biblical times and the early years of the church. The book of Acts (2:16–17 NKJV) records that Peter announced that the miracles at Pentecost—such as many speaking in different tongues—were foretold by the Old Testament prophet Joel to occur “in the last days.” Were these last days limited to the early centuries of the church? This was an active subject of inquiry in the early and medieval periods of church history.

John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) continually heard it asked, “διὰ τί τότε γλώσσαις ἐλάλουν πάντες οἱ βαπτιζόμενοι?” [Why, in the Apostolic era but no longer in the fourth century, did all the baptized speak in tongues?]. As we shall see, Chrysostom’s response—that such visible signs were for the ignorant crowd—would become a cessationist mainstay. For while visible signs were needed to overcome the “aνοητότερον” [foolish] minds of earlier people, mature believers understood that the forgiveness of sins was not a “αἰσθητὸν ἐνδείκνυται σημεῖον” [perceptible sign], hence Chrysostom (1862, col. 459) could state, “Ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν νῦν χρείαν οὐκ ἔχω σημείων” [I do not now need signs].

Similarly, in his early writings, Augustine (354–430) argued that for his predecessors, “the problem was to get people to believe before anyone was fit to reason about divine and invisible things,” but once the Catholic Church was established, “miracles were not allowed to continue till our time, lest the mind should always seek visible things, and the human race should grow cold” (Burleigh 1956, 248). Gregory the Great (c. 540–604) argued that just as a newly planted shrub requires watering, the early church needed “miracuiis fuerat nutrienda” [miracles for nourishment]. But miracles ceased in the mature church, just as “semel radicem fixerint, in rigando cessamos” [watering is ceased once the shrub takes root] (Gregorii 1849, col. 1215). In his commentary on Matthew, Aquinas (c. 1225–74) turned to Augustine to explain the contemporary absence of miracles; namely, that the greatest miracle is already visible—the conversion of the entire world by fishermen: “[Q]uia per duodecim vilissimos homines piscatores totus mundus conversus est” [for the whole world was turned round by twelve simple men who were fishermen]. Additional miracles were unnecessary (Aquinas 2020, 10:1–15). These were early variations of what I will refer to as (i) the “guilt-by-association” (i.e., miracles are needed by and associated with the lowly and uneducated), and (ii) “divine parsimony” (i.e., God uses miracles only where required and does not perform superfluous or redundant acts) arguments.

Other such rationale against the continuation of miracles included that they would allow for weak faith to persist, that to suffer for Christ is much greater than to experience miracles delivering one from persecution, and that contemporary teachers did not rival the apostles. But these arguments against the continuation of miracles, a position that would become known as cessationism, were not often tightly held. This was nowhere more evident than in City of God, Liber XXII, Caput VIII, whose title left no doubt of Augustine’s reversal and continuist conviction that miracles were, indeed, “non desinunt” [not ceased]. While Augustine (1909, book 22, 566) recognized that interlocutor’s inquiries about why traditional miracles were no longer wrought could be answered with cessationist rationale, the church father was at pains to clarify that indeed the premise was false, for “etiam nunc fiunt miracula in eius nomine” [even now miracles are done in his name] (Augustine 1909, book 22, 577). Augustine (1909, book 22, 577) recounted more than twenty miracles, some in considerable detail, but there were many more, as “incomparabili multitudine superant” [they surpass in incomparable numbers]. Augustine had fifty more examples at the ready, but “Quid faciam?” [What should I do?]. A deadline loomed, and he had to finish the work. The problem was not a lack of contemporary miracles but that “sciuntur vix” [they are hardly known], as the miracles were not usually memorialized and thus easily forgotten (Augustine 1909, book 22, 577). The young Augustine’s cessationist rationale for the lack of miracles had now, in the City of God, completely reversed, transforming into a concern that there was an overflow of miracles that was not sufficiently recorded and appreciated.

Aquinas also could revert from cessationist to continuist positions. His cessationist rationale—that post-apostolic contemporary miracles were superfluous compared to earlier miracles—was elsewhere countered by his continuist rationale that miracles serve to confirm preaching and bring repentance. For example, Aquinas affirmed that religious belief was (i) to think with assent and (ii) meritorious, in part because divine teachings can be certified by miracles. In other words, Aquinas (2006, Q2, 1, 1; Q2, 9, 3) made miracles fundamental in the defense of rational religious belief. In Aquinas, following earlier thinkers, we see two fundamental arguments—a cessationist argument from divine parsimony and a continuist argument that miracles serve to certify accompanying doctrine—that would be vigorously deployed in later centuries.

Aquinas also recognized what would become the important middle category of preternatural, in contrast to genuine supernatural and natural phenomena. Whereas the supernatural could be caused only by God’s unmediated action, and natural phenomena were what normally occurred, the preternatural were rare events that were perhaps clever manipulations of the natural world, including plagues, comets, earthquakes, prodigies, and monstrous births. Though seemingly supernatural, the preternatural were believed to be caused by created beings, often thought to be demonic, and not genuinely supernatural. Finally, I note that Aquinas was reported to have firsthand experience with miracles; specifically, he was reported to have observed and experienced levitation on multiple occasions (Eire 2023, 40, 50).

While proto-cessationist sentiment could be found in the first millennium and half of the church’s history, opposing sentiment was not uncommon—even from the same person—and the topic was, at least at times, not controversial or contentious. This changed with the coming of the Reformation and the sixteenth century. The crucial role cessationism would come to play was, at least in part, the result of the contentious relationship between the Protestant Reformers and Catholicism. The Reformers did not merely have doctrinal disputes with the Catholic Church. They consistently viewed the church as nothing less than satanic. Luther (1483–1546) described the Catholic Church as led by the Antichrist (Eire 2023, 61), Calvin (1509–64) compared Catholic priests to Egyptian magicians (Eire 2023, 294), and Protestants “everywhere, at all levels” accused the Catholic Church of being possessed by Satan and his antichrist, often with “obsessive zeal” (Eire 2023, 61). Scottish mathematician and scientist John Napier (1550–1617) listed twenty-one medieval popes, among others, as frauds, necromancers, and magicians, and English churchman John Bale (1495–1563) referred to the Catholic Church as “the synagogue of Satan,” the “spouse of the devil,” and “the devil’s unholy vicar at Rome” (Eire 2023, 61–62). These brief examples, and there are many more, demonstrate the enormous rift between the two groups.

One rather immediate problem with the Protestant Reformers’s rejection of and disdain for the Catholic Church, however, was the wealth of miracles Catholics could claim. The church was very much at one with the miraculous. From the weekly mass wherein the Eucharist underwent a material transformation into the body and blood of the Lord Jesus to dramatic visions and levitations, the supernatural was very much a part of Catholicism. Supernatural events associated with Catholicism were also well documented, so well that the legitimacy of the many miracles associated with and claimed by Catholicism was often beyond dispute. On the one hand, the church’s impressive miracles provided what seemed to be an unassailable doctrinal defense and confirmation. For if miracles serve to authenticate one’s doctrine, then the Catholic Church was in good standing. On the other hand, the church’s miracles provided, by contrast, a seemingly lethal critique of Protestantism, with its stark absence of miracles. These were lines of attack used by Lord Chancellor Thomas More (1478–1535) in his printed 1529–32 debate with English Protestant linguist William Tyndale (c. 1494–1536). More scathingly argued both that the Catholic Church’s miracles were the surest proof of the church’s divine origin and that the Protestant Churches’ lack of miracles proved beyond a shadow of a doubt their demonic origin (Eire 2023, 66).

Such arguments were common and sometimes reinforced with spectacular examples of miracles, such as those provided by the Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila (1515–82). She experienced trances with visibly altered states, ecstasies, and visions. During her ecstasies, she sometimes rose into the air. These levitations were both frequent and spectacular. Her reputation spread through Spain and beyond, though, especially as she was a woman, with no small amount of skepticism. Many in the Catholic Church suspected her to be unorthodox, unholy, under demonic influence, or otherwise fraudulent. But her trances and levitations were witnessed by many. Some eyewitnesses testified under oath that the raptures they saw were so constant and numerous that they “couldn’t even dare to count them” (Eire 2023, 72–74). In addition to these many eye-witness accounts, under pressure, Teresa wrote extensively of her experiences, providing a first-person, empirical perspective. Such evidence was difficult to deny, and Teresa occupies an immense role in the history of Catholic mystics and holy levitations (Eire 2023, 72–74).

Not surprisingly then, Teresa of Avila provided a favorite example of Catholic miracles for Spanish apologists in their refutations of Protestantism. According to Diego de Yepes (1530–1616), she was God’s instrumento para hacer guerra á los hereges (instrument of war against the heretics). For “[f]ue tambien esto traza de Dios, que casi al mismo tiempo que aquel malvado Lutero comenzó á maquinar sus mentiras y engaños, y á confeccionar la ponzoña con que despues dió la muerte á muchos: en esa misma ocasion andaba el Señor formando esta Santa para que fuese como triaca de esta ponzoña” (it was a design of God, that when that wicked Luther began to devise his lies and deceptions, and to concoct the poison with which later he brought death to many: at that same occasion, the Lord formed this Saint, for service as an antidote to this poison) (Yepes 1776, 6).

Jesuit architect Juan de Herrera (1530–97) wrote that Teresa had crushed Luther’s head with the Rock of Christ, and Dominican bishop Juan Gonzalez (1545–1618) wrote that she had effectively won the war against Protestants. Luis de Leon (1527–91), editor of her collected works, wrote that “God willed at this time—when it seems that the devil is triumphant among the throng of infidels who follow him . . . to disgrace and ridicule him by putting before him not some valiant and learned man, but a lone poor woman, to sound the challenge and raise the battle flag” (Eire 2023, 67). In addition to Teresa of Avila, Catholic apologists could cite a great many other miracle accounts, including many levitators both documented and depicted in countless Catholic engravings and paintings. Accounts of levitation dated back to the early church (when they were often taken to be demonic), but they dramatically increased in the early thirteenth century, perhaps as a result of rising literacy rates and the growing number of hagiographies. No exhaustive or authoritative list of medieval levitators has been attempted, but it would include Dunstan of Canterbury (c. 909–88), Christina the Astonishing (c. 1150–1224), Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226), Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Dominic de Guzmán (1170–1221), Anthony of Padua (1195–1231), Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–31), Bonaventure (1221–74), Albert the Great (c. 1200–80), Thomas Aquinas, and Catherine of Siena (1347–80) (Eire 2023, 38–40).

The challenge presented to Protestant Reformers by these many reported miracles associated with the Catholic Church was significant. Even most Reformers agreed that genuine miracles were a sign of true doctrine. Miracles served to authenticate doctrine; therefore, the many well-documented Catholic miracles appeared to refute the core claim of the Reformers that so much of Catholic doctrine was, in fact, false. If even a fraction of the reports were accurate, and the miracles genuine, the Reformation would fail in its most fundamental claims. It was an existential challenge for the Reformation. The Catholic miracle accounts had to be addressed and nullified. The obvious move was a complete rejection of Catholic miracles. Perhaps certain miracle reports were exaggerated or outright false. Perhaps certain phenomena were natural events that were not yet understood and so reported as miracles. Perhaps Satan was cleverly manipulating the natural world, fooling observers into thinking they had witnessed a genuine miracle. In one way or another, Protestants argued that the Catholic miracles must not be genuine, for if genuine miracles implied true doctrine, then by modus tollens false doctrine (as the Reformers insisted the Catholic doctrine was) implied false miracles. This was the doctrinal criterion—the Reformers’s core doctrinal claims required that the Catholic miracles were not genuine.

Observable miracles were not the only Catholic claim of supernatural phenomena rejected by Protestants. Another crucial point of contention was that of extra-biblical revelation and canonicity. This arose prominently in William Whitaker’s (1547/8–97) extensive rebuttal to the Catholic Tridentine view of scripture as articulated by Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) and Thomas Stapleton (1535–98). Whitaker, a professor of Divinity at Cambridge from 1579 to 1595, expressed his views in published lectures entitled “Disputation on Holy Scripture,” including his rejection of the Catholic canonicity claim; that is, the claim to have the authority and knowledge of what constituted genuine scripture. That claim would require extra-biblical revelation. Luther had allowed for direct divine inspiration and even doctrine “yet to be received,” but only if confirmed by “signs” (Heyd 1995, 26–27). But that opened the door to the Catholic’s canonicity claim. This was not a dispute over a specific doctrine. Instead, this was a broader question of extra-biblical revelation. What was needed was a refutation, in principle, of extra-biblical revelation, and that was supplied by the brute claim of cessationism. When Catholic doctrine, thought to be false, was used to conclude that Catholic miracles were not genuine, cessationism had been the conclusion. But now, cessationism had become the premise. It was crucial to Whitaker’s argument and something he took as a given. Stapleton countered that a Protestant determination of canonicity would, in like manner, entail extra-biblical revelation. But Whitaker argued that scripture is understood through no other sources than (i) scripture and (ii) the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. True, the Spirit is not “the same as the books themselves; yet it is not external, nor separate, or alien from the books” (Milne 2007, 55). Thus, Whitaker argued that Protestants could know scripture as scripture without extra-biblical revelation but that the Catholic canonicity claims, on the other hand, were refuted by cessationism (Milne 2007, 52–57).

In addition to the Catholics, another sixteenth and seventeenth century element claiming miracles, including extra-biblical revelation, were the Enthusiasts—a term that was used imprecisely and had strong overlap with the anabaptists and radical reformers. Thus, the Enthusiasts were by no means a single, homogenous group but rather a wide range of groups, movements, and individuals. From the uneducated to the scholarly, and from the fanatical to the elite—the label of enthusiasm was widely applied. As Michael Heyd (1995, 2) put it:

The Enthusiasts tended to reject historical Christian doctrine such as original sin and salvation via faith in Jesus (Heyd 1995, 26) and made extreme eschatological proclamations such as an imminent apocalypse. They claimed miracles, prophecies, and revelations via visions and dreams unmediated by scripture. Such claims of absolute religious truth privileged through direct divine inspiration posed yet another serious challenge to Protestant Reformers, and the Enthusiasts were viewed as a threat throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Enthusiasts’s claims of direct divine inspiration could be countered with the Reformation’s rallying cry of sola scriptura—the restriction of religious truth to the scriptures. The Enthusiasts’s also presented an opportunity for the doctrinal criterion—their doctrinal deviations, even if nuanced, were targets for critics both on the continent and in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to discredit their supernatural claims (Heyd 1995, 25–6; Milne 2007, 125, 215–6).

Catholics also found useful applications of the doctrinal criterion. When Blaise Pascal’s (1623–62) niece’s eye was healed in 1656—one of the best documented apparent miracles in history—though Jansenists such as Pascal interpreted the healing as a divine vindication, Jesuit critics claimed it was a divine warning against their heresy. In other words, “[t]he clinching evidence for the authenticity of an ambiguous miracle was doctrinal” (Daston 1991, 118). This was a reversal of the traditional formula in which miracles were assumed to certify the messenger and his doctrine—now it was the doctrine that certified the miracle. As Pascal put it, “One must judge doctrine by miracles, and one must judge miracles by doctrine” (Daston 1991, 107, 119).

Thus, the doctrinal criterion served to “weaken dramatically the evidentiary force of miracles” (Daston 1991, 119). But the doctrinal criterion was vulnerable to those miracle-claiming Enthusiasts, such as the French Prophets in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, who even critics admitted leaned toward orthodoxy and were “typically Calvinistic” in their doctrines and teachings (Heyd 1995, 166, 172–73). Their supernatural claims would have to be refuted with more robust attacks than the doctrinal criterion. Thus, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the brute claim of cessationism and, beyond cessationism, a broad skepticism of miracles in general, increased. As Heyd (1995, 173–74; emphasis added) explains, “the Protestant principle that miracles ceased to occur after the Apostolic period . . . was a basic Protestant supposition since at least the middle of the sixteenth century. Faced with the challenge of the French Prophets, it was a principle repeated by Protestants of all persuasions . . . Protestant theologians tended to give naturalist accounts for [contemporary] miracles, or at least to claim the existence of natural causes, even if unknown. We find this already in a sermon originally delivered by John Tillotson in 1679.” Likewise, influential French philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) argued that ordinary laws are sufficient to demonstrate God’s will and benevolence, whereas portentous interpretations lead to superstition and idolatry. For Bayle, a naturalized religion was also a sounder religion (Daston 1991, 123). Here, we can see early signs of cessationism leading to naturalism.

The acceptance of cessationism was not limited to narrow theological discourse. By the end of the sixteenth century, cessationist doctrine, as a new truth, was reaching wider audiences. In 1597, King James wrote that since “the establishing of his Church by the Apostles, all miracles, visions, prophecies & appearances of Angels or good Spirits, are ceased; which served only for the sowing of faith, and planting of the Church” (Milne 2007, 111). Within a decade, Shakespeare made use of such conclusions. In All’s Well That Ends Well, Lafew states, “They say miracles are past, and we have our Philosophicall persons, to make modern and familiar things supernaturall and causelesse.” In Henry V, the king is wonderfully transformed, a change the Archbishop of Canterbury agrees must be natural, “for Miracles are ceast” (Kay 1999, 165).

Perhaps the most definitive sign of the rise of cessationism was in the 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF)—for many the gold standard amongst Protestant confessions. It began with the unequivocal statement that whereas in the past “it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manner, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church,” scripture is now most necessary—“those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased” (1.1). Simply put, all miraculous modes of divine revelation had ceased, since scripture was complete.

Cessationism, or at least full-blown cessationism, was not held by all. One concern was that while cessationism provided a strong rebuke to Catholicism and Enthusiasm, its skepticism of miracles could inadvertently aid atheism and pantheism (Heyd 1995, 175). Leading theologian John Owen (1616–83), for example, while fully subscribing to the WCF’s doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture, also allowed for the possibility of ongoing divine miracles (Milne 2007, 8). What was needed was a delineation of genuine miracles, and in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, writers produced a flurry of definitions, requirements, warnings, and the like declaring how miracles were to be understood, to rebuke Enthusiasm but not fuel atheism. For example, as mentioned earlier, miracles accompanied by false doctrine were rejected according to the doctrinal criterion. But miracles announced with orthodox messages could also be rejected, this time according to divine parsimony—God would not provide miracles for known truths dispensed long ago. That would be redundant and superfluous (Heyd 1995, 175–76). Likewise, miracles lacking doctrine altogether could be safely rejected, as Joseph Glanvill (1636–80) did in the case of the cures of the Irish faith healer Valentine Greatrakes (1628–82) (Daston 1991, 120). As Heyd (1995, 175–76) puts it, these combined constraints on miracles placed Enthusiasts in a no-win dilemma—the Enthusiasts’s miracles could be rejected regardless of their doctrine.

Beyond this dilemma, divine parsimony proved to be a durable argument for cessationism. It traced back to the early church, and it saw no less use in the seventeenth century. To be clear, divine parsimony was not an all-out attack on miracles. John Tillotson (1630–94) argued that the biblical miracles helped warrant acceptance of Christian doctrines (Larmer 2025, 7), yet he also made the cessationist argument from parsimony that “when the end is obtained, the means cease; and the wise God, who is never wanting in what is necessary, does not use to be lavish in that which is superfluous.” Similarly, Edward Stillingfleet (1635–99) appealed to divine parsimony: “What imaginable necessity or pretext can there be contrived for a power of miracles, especially among such as already own the Divine revelation of the Scriptures?” Why reprove the already proven? (Daston 1991, 114–15).

On a parallel but equally effective track, miracles were associated with “the bumptious and unlettered,” thus anticipating “Hume’s guilt-by-association argument that wonders proliferated most among the ignorant and barbarous” (Daston 1991, 121). Surely miracles—a lowbrow necessity for the faith of what Luther described as “the ignorant, unbelieving crowd” (Eire 2023, 60)—were beneath God’s dignity.

Another reason to be skeptical of miracle claims was the argument from ignorance. As Glanvill put it, “we are ignorant of the Extent and Bounds of Natures Sphere.” Therefore, exceeding the known powers of nature was an insufficient criterion for putative miracles (Daston 1991, 117; Larmer 2025, 10).

Amidst these seventeenth-century debates, the emerging natural philosophy raised an important question for cessationists: Would the new science be an antidote to Enthusiasm or a manifestation of it (Heyd 1995, 157)? An early hint came from Francis Bacon (1561–1626), for many the father of modern science. Bacon (1829, 157) did not deny miracles but argued from parsimony that “nec Deus unquam edidit miraculum, quo converteretur atheus, quia poterat ipso naturae lumine ad notitiam Dei perduci” [God did not produce miracles to convert the atheist because he can arrive at the knowledge of God by the light of nature]. Therefore, atheists are to be converted by the contemplation of nature that is provided by natural philosophy. Similarly, the new science was also “certissimam superstitionis medicinam” [a cure for superstition] (Brougham 1835, p. 141), such as held by the Enthusiasts. Thus, Bacon provided a sanction for science to focus on natural laws and processes, a fact that, as I will discuss, Henry Peter Brougham (1778–1868) would amplify in the nineteenth century.

In the latter seventeenth century, English churchman Thomas Sprat (1635–1713), fellow of the Royal Society and author of the 1667 History of the Royal Society of London, elaborated on how the new science could help deflect Enthusiasm. Sprat (1667, 35) explained that Bacon and his followers had not only rejected Aristotelianism but had proposed the “right course of slow, and sure Experimenting.” The Experimental Philosopher “will be very scrupulous . . . He cannot suddenly conclude all extraordinary events to be the immediate Finger of God . . . He cannot blindly consent to all imaginations of devout men . . . He cannot be forward to assent to Spiritual Raptures, and Revelations” (Sprat 1667, 358–60). Sprat’s (1667, 358–60) warnings did not stem from atheists but from the “imaginations of devout men” and “disguises of Faith.” Thus, in the new experimental philosophy, enthusiasm ennobled the rejection of the supernatural and in its place a shift toward strict naturalistic explanations. This way, the philosopher would help identify those natural events the Enthusiasts had misinterpreted as omens, wonders, and miracles. The philosopher—thus so directed to identify and filter out the many false miracle claims of the Enthusiasts—would not detract from the biblical miracles but confirm them all the more.

Now, in Sprat, the experimental philosopher, shunning the miraculous, is a defender of the Gospel and juxtaposed against the Enthusiast. Sprat thus prescribed a systematic study of nature in which, ultimately, science’s objective was to discover naturalistic explanations for all phenomena. For Sprat and seventeenth century natural philosophers, viewing divine providence as resulting from God’s regular laws and processes, rather than supernatural intervention, helped them avoid the dangers of Enthusiasm (Heyd 1995, 158).

In the eighteenth and later centuries, cessationism expanded its claims. Originally, cessationism had allowed for miracles to persist beyond biblical times, into the early-church Apostolic Age, before they ceased altogether. The next logical step, taken by English clergyman Conyers Middleton (1683–1750) at mid-century, was to reject the miracles of the Apostolic Age (Middleton 1749). Middleton leaned heavily on the arguments handed down from the previous centuries, including rationalist, anti-Catholic, and guilt-by-association arguments.

For example, the bones and relics of earlier saints were reportedly miraculously discovered and subsequently wrought miracles such as healings. But that did not make sense, for “how can we think credible, that God should withhold his distinguishing favors from his faithful servants when living, to bestow them on their rotten bones?” (Middleton 1749, 23). Furthermore, would God “employ his extraordinary power to no other use, but to perpetuate a manifest imposter [Catholicism] in his church?” (Middleton 1749, 23). Or again, regarding the visions of resurrected martyrs, “there seems to be the greatest reason to suspect that they were all contrived, or authorized at least, by the leading men of the Church, for the sake of moderating and governing with more ease the unruly spirit of the populace” (Middleton 1749, 84).

The precise dating of when miracles ceased in the Apostolic Age had always varied among different commentators, but Middleton now removed miracles from the Apostolic Age altogether. Middleton’s backdating of miracles to the biblical era was controversial but ultimately quite influential, as evidenced by B. B. Warfield’s (1851–1921) weighty endorsement at the opening of the twentieth century. Warfield, last of the influential nineteenth-century reformed “Princeton theologians,” commended Middleton in his own cessationist tome, Counterfeit Miracles. Warfield (1918, 30) described Middleton as reaching the “correct conclusion” and repeated several of Middleton’s rationalist God-wouldn’t-do-it-that-way and guilt-by-association arguments. “After a century and a half the book remains unrefuted,” Warfield (1918, 31) concluded, as “its main contention seems to be put beyond dispute.”

In the twentieth century, cessationism continued to gain strength. At mid-century, John Walvoord (1910–2002), president of Dallas Theological Seminary for a third of the century, affirmed “the power of God to perform miracles,” but explained that the gift to perform miracles “ceased at end of the apostolic age,” for with the completion of the New Testament, “the need for further unusual display of miraculous works ceased,” as “the written Word speaks for itself” (Walvoord 1954, 174–80). Similarly, James Oliver Buswell (1895–1977), World War I chaplain, president of Wheaton College and the National Bible Institute/Shelton College, and dean of Covenant Theological Seminary, wrote in his Systematic Theology that “God generally ceased to work through ‘sign’ miracles when the New Testament was finished,” for “the ‘miracle of grace,’ the witness of the Spirit, answered prayer, and supremely, the written Word, shall be the chief sources of knowledge of Himself for His people during this age” (Buswell 1962, 181).

Unlike deism, which usually was considered unorthodox and was relatively short-lived, cessationism typically was situated squarely within orthodoxy and has remained prolific since the Reformation. Not surprisingly, cessationist sentiment did not remain neatly contained within cessationism’s narrow initial theological definition. Heyd (1995, 176, 180) explains how reinforced cessationism, resulting from opposition to Enthusiasm, helped usher in a greater role of reason in theological discourse and a foreshadowing of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment:

One way cessationism anticipated and assisted the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was through the increasing views of miracles as refuted. With the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cessationist doctrines barely settled, philosophers and commentators increasingly began calling for the outright rejection of miracles altogether, often leveraging cessationist arguments.

For example, as with the divine parsimony cessationist argument, the emerging rejection of miracles also incorporated arguments from parsimony. Miracles were not needed, it was often argued, because the infinite and perfect God can be expected to create a world that also is infinite in its perfections. Therefore, there is no need to intervene with miracles. English philosopher and deist Charles Blount (1654–93), in his 1683 work Miracles, No Violations of the Laws of Nature, argued that “the power of God and the power of nature are one and the same, and that all her laws are his eternal decrees,” therefore, to think that unusual events are miracles, which are “effected by the immediate Power of God” is “point blank repugnant to the fundamental Laws and Constitutions of Nature, which he and his infinite Wisdom hath made, and made so ample and fertile, as to extend to the certain production of whatever Events he has willed and decreed . . . the Power of God being infinite, that of Nature must be so too, because one and the same with the Power of God” (Blount 1683, ii–iv). In other words, God’s natural laws are fully capable of fulfilling divine will, such that there is no need for divine interventions. Any so-called “miracles” must simply be the production of natural laws. For example, botanist Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) argued that the Bible’s miracle stories were real but not supernatural. Yes, the walls of Jericho fell, but they did so as a result of an earthquake. There was nothing supernatural, for it was a result of natural law in action. The miracle is in the precise timing, which only God could have arranged by building it into the laws of nature from the beginning (Westfall 1958, 99). Similarly, mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) banished miracles from science. As discussed later, Leibniz did not believe that there is a divine hand involved in the course of history, for this would indicate an unparsimonious creator whose creation is in need of adjustment and tinkering. The providence of God is a result of God’s wisdom and foresight rather than his active role in nature’s history.

It was similarly argued that since natural laws and future particular needs are productions of the same creator, they must be consistent. God shapes nature’s general laws and the future plan such that the former is capable of producing the latter. Anything less would be a sign of an unworthy creator. As English deist Thomas Morgan (1671/2–1743) wrote in 1741 that nature’s “established general Laws” were sufficient and that the “original Plan was so perfect as not to require any farther Alterations or Amendments upon particular Occasions, or arising Incidents in Futurity.” Therefore, “these general Laws will account for a particular Providence, and all the Measures which God takes in the Preservation and Government of the World” (Morgan 1741, v–vi). In fact, the very greatness of God is at stake.

Thus, it follows for Morgan (1741, 96) that God must not “miraculously interpose” in nature “because this would subvert the whole Order of the Universe, and destroy all the Wisdom and Contrivance of the first Plan.”

The argument could be stripped down to a matter of divine contradiction. As Blount (1683, iv) explained, if a miracle is defined as an event “contrary to the Laws of Nature, or which cannot possibly follow from her fixed and immutable Order: then I dare not believe that any such Miracle hath ever happened in Nature, lest I oppose God to God, that is, admit that God changes his own Decrees; which from the Perfection of the divine Nature, I know to be impossible.” Similarly, English freethinker Peter Annet (1747, 20) explained in 1747, “If the laws of nature are the laws of God, and he can subvert those laws, then God can contradict himself, and every absurdity is possible with him; but if this be impossible, then God can do nothing supernatural.” In other words, Annet (1747, 32) believed he had disproven miracles, or, as he put it, his “intended subject . . . is the impossibility of miracles.”

In addition to these arguments that divine miracles would be unnecessary, inconsistent, unworthy of God, and contradictory, another cessationist category—always lurking in the rejection of miracles literature—was the guilt-by-association argument. Blount (1683, 8) agreed that “[m]iracles have been wrought, Ad captum Vulgi, to convince the Vulgar, which was wholly ignorant of the Principles of natural things.” So, the vulgar were convinced not because the miracle actually contradicted natural laws but because the vulgar were “wholly ignorant of the Principles of natural things” and so interpreted the event as such. Likewise, “the Ancients took that for a Miracle” (Blount 1683, 8). Hence it was a “dangerous Error of the Multitude, that God hath created Nature so impotent, and given her Laws and Rules so barren, as that he is compelled sometimes to help her by new Ordinances and supplies of Virtue, in order to her Support and Conservation, and that things may succeed according to his Intention and Design. An Error than which nothing is more . . . unworthy the Majesty of the divine Nature” (Blount 1683, 7–8). Similarly, Sprat (1667, 358–59) explained that whereas “the Experimental Philosopher . . . familiarly beholds the inward workings of things: and thence perceives that many effects . . . are brought forth by the common Instruments of Nature,” nonetheless these effects “use to affright the Ignorant.”

Guilt by association was also prominent in English theologian Thomas Woolston’s (c. 1668–1733) arguments for why the Bible’s miracles must be allegorical and not literal. John 4 (29 NKJV) records the miracle of Jesus telling the Samaritan adulteress by the well “all things that [she] ever did.” But if this “absurd Tale” is taken literally, Woolston (1727, 51) argues, Jesus would be associating with and fulfilling the expectations of an adulteress and her dim-witted neighbors “that the Messiah would be a strolling Fortune-Teller.” The woman, “if she had not been an impudent and graceless Whore, would have gone away blushing, and never have divulged, as the Text supposes she did, her Shame to the Men of Sychar, who too had but little Wit, or they had never stirred from their Homes, to see such a Fortune-Teller upon the Report of a poor Whore” (Woolston 1727, 52). On the whole it was an unbecoming, “silly Story” (Woolston 1727, 48–55), as were many of the other Bible miracles, such as Jesus casting devils out of a madman and into a herd of pigs (Luke 8:26–39). “I could even now laugh at the Thoughts of the Hogs running and tumbling down-hill, as if the Devil drove them” (Woolston 1727, 56).

In addition to the divine parsimony and guilt-by-association arguments, Annet made what to my knowledge was the first argument that miracles undercut the pursuit of scientific knowledge. While many of the arguments against miracles had been ontological (i.e., miracles are not real), this argument was epistemological: the refutation of miracles, regardless of their ontological status, is required for scientific thought. Sprat had argued that the new science should eschew miracles to combat Enthusiasm, but now Annet argued that miracles must be rejected for science even to be possible. Annet (1744, 75) began with an appeal to induction: “As we know by experience that all men die, and rise no more, therefore we conclude, for a dead man to rise to life again, is contrary to the uniform and settled course of nature . . . To believe it possible contradicts this maxim, That nature is steady and uniform in her operations: For one miracle or action, done contrary to her laws, contradicts all her steady uniform springs and movements; and all that mankind calls truth and reason.” It would be difficult to overstate the threat, as truth and reason are at stake. If we admit a miracle, then:

From a philosophical perspective, the argument is problematic. As John Earman (2000, 20) puts it, “Annet seems to be saying that either naïve induction by enumeration works, or nothing does.” But from a historical perspective, it is important. As I will discuss, it anticipates the intellectual necessity argument for evolution and illustrates an intermediary between cessationism and evolution.

These debates, on top of the cessationist doctrines and arguments from earlier centuries, formed much of the basis for David Hume’s 1748 “Of Miracles,” section X of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Larmer 2025, 2, 111ff). In recent decades commentators have attempted to frame Hume as not outright rejecting miracles but rather arguing for their evidential insufficiency (Brooke 1991, 184–85), leaving us forever unable to verify that they ever occurred. But Robert Larmer has demonstrated the failure of this lowering of the bar for Hume. Hume does seem to have believed that he conclusively showed miracles not to have occurred (Larmer 2025, xiii–xvii, 42ff). Larmer and other contemporary critics, as well as eighteenth-century contemporaries of Hume, have levied strong criticism of Hume’s attack on miracles (Larmer 2025, 61ff, 111ff; Earman 2000, 70–71). But as with Middleton, Hume was highly influential in the following decades and centuries (Larmer 2025, xii), and miracles were increasingly rejected outright.

For example, in 1835, theologian David Friedrich Strauss published his Das Leben Jesu [The Life of Jesus], in which he influentially argued that the biblical miracle stories were neither mischaracterizations of natural phenomena nor reports of actual supernatural events as they were presented but rather a sort of mythology intended to convey underlying truths. In their twentieth-century textbook, Hans Conzelmann and Andreas Lindemann (1988, 62) describe Strauss’s contribution: “The mythical character of the [miracle] narratives was to be acknowledged. On the other hand, it was clearly evident that all of what is narrated [in the Bible’s miracle stories] had to be ahistorical because it contradicted reason.” Such reason, in fact, had already been provided by the Enlightenment:

Purported miracles may have been natural processes in disguise, or simply mythological constructs. But in any case, they were not actually supernatural events, leading twentieth-century theologians argued. Rudolf Bultmann (1960, 291–92), for example, made an intellectual necessity argument that historiography required strict naturalism: “This closedness means that the continuum of historical happenings cannot be rent by the interference of supernatural, transcendent powers and that therefore there is no ‘miracle’ in this sense of the word.” David Jenkins (1987, 63), Bishop of Durham, proclaimed that “a God who uses the openness of his created universe . . . to insert additional causal events from time to time into that universe to produce particular events or trends by that eventuality alone would be a meddling demigod, a moral monster and a contradiction of himself.” And Pope Francis stated that the species arose from lawlike processes rather than miracles: “When we read about creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so” (Tharoor 2014).

The earlier cessationist and anti-miracle moves influenced nineteenth-century evolutionary theories. Specifically, arguments and proofs that paralleled cessationist and anti-miracle traditions appear as recurring themes in the evolution literature. These typically were expressed—with cessationism and miracle skepticism now well in hand—as truths with little need of justification, by both leading commentators and the theoreticians who were developing the new evolutionary theories. Here, I summarize how three such cessationist doctrines were followed by parallel metaphysical claims that were foundational in the emerging evolutionary thinking.

My first example is the positioning of natural philosophy to oppose Enthusiasm by embracing naturalistic explanations, and a parallel in origin studies, the intellectual necessity of naturalistic explanations. This positioning of natural philosophy took two contrasting forms. First, a study of the regular, uniform, non-miraculous operations of nature was needed to refute atheism and Enthusiasm. For, as Bacon argued, it is not by miracles but rather by the contemplation of nature that atheists are converted. Furthermore, as Sprat argued, such a study of natural philosophy would help identify those natural events the Enthusiasts had misinterpreted as omens, wonders, and miracles. In these ways, the new science would serve as an antidote to, rather than a manifestation of, Enthusiasm. Second, it was, as Glanvill and others had argued, precisely our ignorance of the “Extent and Bounds of Natures Sphere” that made the Enthusiasts’s miracle claims untrustworthy. Exceeding the known powers of nature was an insufficient criterion for putative miracles, and natural philosophers should focus on naturalistic explanations.

These arguments are examples of how cessationism influenced natural philosophy toward strictly naturalistic explanations. They also provided later centuries with a substrate from which to mandate naturalism in origins studies. Naturalism became an intellectual necessity for the success of science. Consider the remarkable shift signaled in the 1809 claim from early evolutionist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck that “[t]he only knowledge that it is possible for us to acquire is and always will be confined to what we have derived from a continued study of nature’s laws; beyond nature all is bewilderment and delusion: such is my belief” (Gershenowitz 1978, 59). For Lamarck, naturalism was essential for the success of science.

A more elaborate early nineteenth-century example came from no less than the Lord Chancellor of England, the outspoken and prodigious Henry Peter Brougham (1778–1868). Brougham entered the University of Edinburgh at the age of fourteen and found practically no subject beyond his grasp. He was simultaneously an abolitionist, an advocate for the people, and a defender of the throne. His successful defense of Queen Caroline in 1820 against an attack from parliament brought Brougham to the pinnacle of fame. For Brougham, the physical sciences were a hobby, and he issued his own edition of Paley’s Natural Theology in 1835. Brougham leaned heavily on Bacon and other cessationist traditions to argue for the necessity of naturalistic explanations. Brougham recalled Bacon’s arguments for the superiority of such explanations, as well as cessationist sentiment that miracles not only could be of demonic origin but also relied on eye-witness testimony, which weakens over time as memories become more distant. According to Brougham, what is needed are not repeated miracles for each generation to see afresh but “a perpetual miracle is a contradiction in terms; for the exception to, or suspension of, the laws of nature so often repeated would destroy the laws themselves, and with the laws the force of the exception of suspension” (Brougham 1835, 209). Furthermore, whereas miracles demonstrate only God’s power, the works of creation demonstrate God’s wisdom and goodness. And unlike miracles, whose evidential power weakens over time, the study of creation only strengthens over time.

Glanvill’s warning of our ignorance of the “Extent and Bounds” of nature (as an argument against the Enthusiasts) also proved to be a durable substrate for nineteenth-century intellectual necessity. John Stuart Mill pointed out that “nothing can ever prove that [a purported miracle] is a miracle: there is still another possible hypothesis, that of its being the result of some unknown natural cause” (Gillespie 1979, 150). Similarly, Thomas H. Huxley insisted that “[w]e can never be in a position to set bounds to the possibilities of nature” (Gillespie 1979, 149), for “the day-fly has better grounds for calling a thunderstorm supernatural, than has a man, with his experience of an infinitesimal fraction of duration, to say that the most astonishing event that can be imagined is beyond the scope of natural causes” (Mullin 2003, 209). Likewise, John Tyndall, in the prayer-gauge debate, argued that inferences of a miracle were invalid given that our knowledge of the intricacies of nature was constantly expanding (Mullin 2003, 209). Oxford professor and Anglican priest Baden Powell (1855, 354–55) insisted that “[n]o inductive inquirer can bring himself to believe in the existence of any real hiatus in the continuity of physical laws in past eras.” Instead, science must view changes, however seemingly abrupt, as having been brought about by the gradual agency of some regular causes. To deny such principles “in any instance would be to endanger all science” (Powell 1855, 354–55).

The ever-increasing conviction was that science ought to restrict itself to naturalistic explanations, whether because of our limited knowledge of nature or, more importantly, in order to find truth, or even for the very survival of science. In any case, miracles not only could but must be excluded from science, as Darwin did in On the Origin of Species. This cessationist sentiment was evident in his discussion of the geographic distribution of species, for example, where Darwin (1872, 320) admitted that his view undoubtedly had “many cases of extreme difficulty,” yet “[h]e who rejects it, rejects the vera causa of ordinary generation with subsequent migration, and calls in the agency of a miracle.” Similarly, though certain supernatural, nonutilitarian views “if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory” (Darwin 1872, 160), they could be safely discarded as “beyond the scope of scientific discussion” (Darwin 1872, 159).

Later in the decade, botanist Karl von Nägeli explained that “everything can be explained in a natural way,” and George Romanes declared that “the knowledge that a Deity is superfluous as an explanation of anything . . . is grounded on an a priori necessity of reason—i.e., if the fact were not so, our science, our thought, our very existence itself, would be scientifically impossible” (Gillespie 1979, 151). Tyndall explained that “Science demands the radical extirpation of caprice and the absolute reliance upon law in nature” (Gillespie 1979, 151), and at the University of California, Joseph Le Conte (1891, 65–66) wrote:

This nineteenth-century insistence that science is critically dependent on strictly naturalistic explanations did not wane in the twentieth century. The French Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) described Darwin’s theory of evolution as no mere theory or hypothesis but “a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true” (Dobzhansky 1962, 347).

More recently, Bruce Alberts (2005), then president of National Academy of Sciences, explained that although our knowledge of evolution is incomplete and has many gaps, “the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations.”

My second example is the guilt-by-association argument for cessationism and a parallel in origin studies, infra dignitatem. As discussed, the guilt-by-association argument cast miracles as a lowbrow affair, needed to firm up the faith of the illiterate but beneath those of means. Similarly, the infra dignitatem argument cast nature’s lowly things as beneath God’s dignity (Hunter 2022). It traces back at least to seventeenth-century Anglican Ralph Cudworth, who wrote that it would be unbecoming of God to “Form the Body of every Gnat and Fly, Insect and Mite” with his own hands (Allen 2013, 341).

Following Cudworth, the botanist John Ray (1735, Part I, 51), for many the father of British natural theology, believed that God would not “set his own hand as it were to every work, and immediately do all the meanest and trifling’st things himself drudgingly.” Similarly, George Louis Comte de Buffon opposed the “indignity of involving God in trivial anatomical details” (Burbridge 1998, 57). Likewise, Darwin (1838, 36–37) expressed the infra dignitatem argument to himself:

Darwin (1909, 254) again used the infra dignitatem argument in his 1844 essay:

In that same year, the infra dignitatem argument was made by Robert Chambers in his popular and controversial 1844 pseudonymous work Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation:

Though lacking a detailed theory of biological evolution, Vestiges played a significant role in the cultural uptake of evolutionary ideas in mid-century Britain. One enthusiastic reader was evolution co-founder, Alfred Russell Wallace (1898, 138):

For readers such as Wallace, Vestiges was exciting despite the fact that it did not offer a convincing or compelling theory of origins. It merely needed to offer a lawlike narrative, however incomplete. In 1867, Wallace (1867, 474) wrote his own version of the infra dignitatem argument:

God would not be involved in the particular, peculiar details of nature, and that included the geographical distribution of the species. As Darwin (1859, 478) argued in On the Origin of Species: “[T]he presence of peculiar species of bats, and the absence of all other mammals, on oceanic islands, are utterly inexplicable on the theory of independent acts of creation.” A year later, Darwin made a reductio ad absurdum argument in a letter to Asa Gray. Do you believe, Darwin asked, “that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant?” If not—and the same logic applied to man—then why believe “that their first birth or production should be necessarily designed”? (Gould 1999, 203). God would be no more involved in the creation of the species than he would be in their death.

By the twentieth century, the point had become moot and needed only a rhetorical reminder. Geneticist and leading evolutionist J. B. S. Haldane pointed out that the creator must have had an inordinate fondness for beetles to have created over 250,000 different species (Berra 1990, 142). Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973, 127) asked, “Was the Creator in a jocular mood when he made Psilopa petrolei for California oil-fields and species of Drosophila to live exclusively on some body parts of certain land crabs on only certain islands in the Caribbean?” Douglas Futuyma (1983, 127) rhetorically asked, “What could have possessed the Creator to bestow two horns on the African rhinoceroses and only one on the Indian species?” Regarding the elephant-like fossil species, Ken Miller (1999, 97) stated that “[t]his designer has been busy! And what a stickler for repetitive work!” While the metaphysics are obvious here, they can be dropped altogether for a brute evidential claim, as in this example from the National Academy of Sciences (1999, 15):

The underlying theological substrate was now gone altogether, and observations such as “colossal diversity” and “extraordinary, seemingly whimsical creatures” were brute confirmations of evolution.

My third example is cessationism’s divine parsimony argument and a parallel sentiment in origins discourse, greater god theology. As I described earlier, divine parsimony—the notion that God does not perform superfluous or redundant acts—traces back at least to Aquinas and Gregory the Great. In the seventeenth century, it was elaborated on by the likes of Tillotson and Stillingfleet. “The wise God,” Tillotson argued, “who is never wanting in what is necessary, does not use to be lavish in that which is superfluous” (Daston 1991, 114–15). In this sense, it was the better God who economized and used special divine action only where required.

Similarly, in origins studies, greater god theology held that it was the greater god who was economical in the use of miracles in the creation acts (Hunter 2022). In the seventeenth century, this was argued by both Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) and Thomas Burnet (c. 1635–1715), though in very different contexts—theodicy for Malebranche and cosmogony for Burnet. Malebranche’s argument for the existence of natural evil was that while God could have created a world with less of it, that would have required additional miracles, targeted at specialized, particular problems of creation. Instead, God valued parsimony in the creation acts and the use of universal natural law. It was a divine trade-off between evil versus parsimony, and the result for Malebranche was an emphasis on the role of natural law in the origin of the world (Black 1997, 28). Burnet was at the pinnacle of the cosmogony tradition in seventeenth-century England, explaining the origin of the world. He employed the oft-used clock analogy, but in this case to illustrate the greater god theology: “We think him a better Artist that makes a Clock that strikes regularly at every Hour from the Springs and Wheels which he puts in the Work, than he that hath so made his Clock that he must put his finger to it every Hour to make it strike” (Burnet 1719, 146).

The greater clockmaker is more parsimonious, making a clock that works automatically. So too the greater god is the god who makes a universe that works by itself, according to natural law, rather than requiring divine intervention. This was in contrast to Isaac Newton’s suggestion that the creator may occasionally intervene in the cosmos to correct for anomalies predicted by his new physics (Burtt 1954, 296ff). Newton’s suggestion inspired the similar complaint that miracles, in addition to violating parsimony, revealed an unskilled, tinkerer creator who needed to intervene in creation “to mend his work and to set it right,” as Leibniz put it (Danielson 2000, 245). Leibniz was a devout Lutheran, and he accused Newton of disrespect for God in proposing the idea that God was not sufficiently skilled to create a self-sufficient clockwork universe (Brush 1996, 17). For Leibniz, “when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature but those of grace” (Danielson 2000, 246). Again, as with Malebranche and Burnet, Leibniz reveals not an opposition to miracles per se but rather, as with the divine parsimony sentiment, restrictions on the purposes and types of miracles that are allowed. Unless these conditions are met, God would not work a miracle.

After Leibniz, Lutheran philosopher Christian Wolff elaborated on greater god theology, arguing that after the initial creation of the universe, any subsequent miracle would indicate that there was a blemish that needed removal. This, in turn, reveals a lack of wisdom. Creating the universe without such blemishes, and therefore no need for miracles, requires a greater god. Thus, Wolff reasoned that God would not use miracles except when natural processes were insufficient, and that occurs only at the initial creation ex nihilo. Wolff concluded that miracles cannot occur except at the initial creation event. From then on, natural law must have reigned (Saine 1987, 110–11). At the close of the century, Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus celebrated this doctrine. He found Hume’s idea that the world might have been generated rather than created, gradually produced from very small beginnings by its inherent principles, to be indicative of “a greater infinity” (Darwin 1794, 509).

In the nineteenth century, this sentiment was increasingly internalized. As Adrian Desmond and James Moore (1991) put it, the “lawful” approach was carrying the day. For example, Charles Babbage, reformer, polymath, and creator of the “Difference Engine,” wrote the unauthorized Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, countering the authorized volumes, which critics such as Babbage saw as suggesting a creator with both a lack of foresight and a lack of dignity. In Babbage’s narrative, God created the laws that created the species, thus displaying “a degree of power and of knowledge of a far higher order” (Desmond and Moore 1991, 213). Charles Lyell agreed and saw Babbage’s “estimate of the Creator’s attributes much higher” than those proposing an interventionist Creator (Desmond and Moore 1991, 214). Darwin also appealed to divine parsimony in notes to himself. For example:

In a later entry, Darwin made a Leibnitzian comment that “we profane” in thinking that God’s magnificent laws are not capable of “produc[ing] every effect, of every kind which surrounds us” (Cornell 1987, 390).

So, it is not too surprising that Darwin’s new theory of evolution would be approved on the basis of greater god theology. One of Darwin’s early clerical supporters, the Anglican Charles Kingsley, wrote that “We knew of old that God was so wise that He could make all things but behold, He is so much wiser than even that, that He can make all things make themselves” (Murphy 2003, 119).

The post-Reformation rise of cessationism played an important role in bringing about a paradigm shift in how the natural relates to the supernatural. Not surprisingly, this paradigm shift impacted natural philosophy and the new science. As Heyd (1995, 5) puts it, the cessationist reaction to Enthusiasm is “a phenomenon in the history of science no less than in Church history.”

This article has explored the influences of this shift on the origins science and, in particular, on the emergence of modern evolutionary thought. The cessationism and miracle skepticism paradigm shift resulted in a deep and broad sea change in theological attitudes regarding miracles. These new attitudes could serve as substrates upon which to build arguments for evolution. This article suggests three such parallel relationships, as summarized in Table 1.

As this article has shown, both the cessationist substrates and the evolution traditions listed in Table 1 have been pervasive and robust in the literature, including contemporary literature. Therefore, while commentators have noted robust metaphysical traditions in the evolution literature (Hunter 2021), this article demonstrates how some of these traditions are an echo of earlier, historical theological underpinnings motivated by the doctrine of cessationism.