Almost as obligatory as the chocolate eggs at Easter is the media coverage of some cleric who denies the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and who goes on to say that whether or not it happened, it is not important anyway.

This, of course, is quite contrary to the attitude of the Apostle Paul, who said, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins" (1 Cor 15:17). There can be no doubt that by "resurrection" Paul, as a first-century pharisaic Jew, meant "bodily resurrection", as indeed his following discussion of resurrection bodies shows. For many people belief in miracles seems impossible because of the success of modern science. The 18th century sceptical Scottish philosopher David Hume set a trend when he argued that since miracles are a violation of the laws of nature, and because "a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws" and moreover, "a uniform experience amounts to proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle". Whatever Hume had in mind, later popularisers of his argument have pointed to science as the chief example of the uniform experience that establishes the inviolable laws of nature and rules out miracles.

Science has indeed shown that there is a great deal of regularity in the world. Its success has depended on being able to discover these regularities and express them in terms of scientific, or natural, laws. But does that really mean that science has proved the impossibility of miracles? No, not at all. The claim that it does rests on a misconception of the scientific laws of nature.

A scientific law is a description (on words or, preferably, because of its greater exactness, in a mathematical formula) of an observed regularity within nature. Before formulating the law the scientist will have observed, and in this sense "experienced" the regularity on several (perhaps many) occasions. Now it is one thing to let this "experience" govern one's expectations for the future and so assume that the regularity will hold on future occasions. It is quite another thing to say that the regularity cannot be broken and that therefore any claimed miracle that violates it cannot happen. This claim, which may seem logical, involves making a big, scientifically improvable, assumption.

To appreciate this we need to recognise an essential feature of the proof of scientific laws. The argument that, since in the past under certain circumstances event A has always been followed by event B, therefore there is a law that links A and B, is what is called an inductive argument. This is quite different from a deductive argument. A deductive argument starts from certain accepted truths and shows what, according to the principles of logic, must follow them. The validity of inductive reasoning cannot be proved by the application of the principles of logic. Somewhat ironically, David Hume himself showed that this cannot be done. Its validity simply has to be assumed.

To some extent the success of science has justified this assumption. It has shown that there is a great deal of regularity in nature. However, what science can never do is prove that this regularity is absolutely uniform throughout all space and time and can never be violated. After all, we can only ever hope to experience a limited area of space for a limited time.

Hume may be right to claim that a uniform experience of the law of nature would prove that miracles are impossible; however, such an experience is impossible. Therefore to claim that there is an absolute, unbreakable regularity in nature, which rules out miracles, is to make a claim unjustified by science and scientifically improvable. The most that science can say is that miracles, if they happen, are unusual events.

From a Christian point of view it is not surprising that there is a great deal of regularity in nature. The Bible leads us to expect this. Our God is faithful and reliable. We would expect his creation to reflect this as part of "declaring his glory" (ps 19:1). Moreover we are told that he has established and guaranteed such regularities as day and night, summer and winter, seedtime and harvest (Gen 8:22; Ps 104:19).

As Creator and Sustainer of these regularities, God is not shackled by them. They express his normal way of acting with respect to nature, but he is free to act otherwise if he wishes. However, when he does act in a different way he is not being purely arbitrary. The ultimate pattern of order is not the regularities which the scientist can observe in nature, but the unchanging character of God. When he acts in a way which, from our point of view, violates the laws of nature he is being true to a higher law, that of his own character – which is only partially expressed in the laws of nature.

It was on this basis of his understanding of the character of God that the psalmist said, "For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption" (Acts 2:27). So, as Peter implied by his quotation from Ps 16, when Jesus the sinless one was unlawfully crucified it would have been out of character if God the Father had not raised him bodily from the dead - and those who knew the character of God should have expected this, even though it is contrary to the inductive argument, based on extensive experience, that "dead men do not rise". A God who did nothing about the event as evil and tragic as the judicial murder of Jesus, the sinless one who willingly gave himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, would indeed be one in whom it was futile to have any faith.

However, Jesus was raised; and we, with the Apostle Paul, can say, "Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 15:57).