Allama Tabatabai On the Nature of Miracles

Allamah Tabatabai in Tafseer al Mizan rejects the notion prevalent among the laity, concerning miracles being essentially-impossible ممتنع بالذات occurrences on the ground that an essentially-impossible event or occurrence is one the existence of which is not possible due to the essence ماھیت of that thing itself ; in other words the essence of the thing under consideration lacks the capacity or the disposition استعداد to receive existence from an existence-bestowing source مبداء for instance a ‘non-caused effect’ ; the proposition of a non-caused effect is self-contradictory because by its very definition an effect is a contingent existent
ممکن بالذات and as such can only come into existence when its existence is necessitated by a cause in other words when the possibility of its existence امکان وجود is granted preference by a cause over the possibility of its non-existence ; therefore it is impossible for a contingent to exist without having been caused by another ; according to the Grand Master of Islamic Philosophy miracles are essentially-possible events the existence of which is not essentially-impossible but only customarily-impossible since they do not occur very frequently.

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