Earlier posts uncovered epistemic as opposed to ontic conceptions of miracles in Augustine and in Spinoza; but Immanuel Kant too seems to favor an epistemic approach. "If one asks: What is to be understood by the word miracle? it may be explained . . . by saying that they are events in the world the operating laws of whose causes are, and must remain, absolutely unknown to us." (Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Harper Torchbooks, p. 81) There is no talk here, as in Hume, of a miracle as involving a "transgression" of a law of nature. The idea is that in the case of miraculous events there are laws of nature operating but these laws are unknown to us. This seems to imply that the miraculousness of a miracle is an appearance relative to our ignorance. If we knew the laws, there would be no miracles.
The advantage of the epistemic approach is that it rescues us from the rank absurdity, pointed out by Hume, of having to say that there are laws of nature that admit of exceptions. Since our understanding is imperfect, our formulations of the laws of nature will some of them admit of exceptions. But it is hard to credit the idea that the laws themselves could admit of exceptions.
The epistemic approach, however, has a drawback. It seems to undercut the evidentiary value of miracles, a point made by Antony Flew. But I won't repeat what I said in an earlier post.
In Kant's philosophy or religion, however, miracles have no role to play except perhaps in the rise and spread of a religion:
If a moral religion (which must consist not in dogmas and rites but in the heart's disposition to fulfill all human duties as divine commands) is to be established, all miracles which history connects with its inauguration must themselves in the end render superfluous the belief in miracles in general; for it bespeaks a culpable degree of moral unbelief not to acknowledge as completely authoritative the commands of duty — commands primordially engraved upon the heart of man through reason — unless they are in addition accredited through miracles: "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." (John 4, 48) (Ibid., p. 79)
Kant is saying in effect that miracles have no role to play in the validation of a religion since the needs of a true and moral religion can be supplied by reason alone. Miracles play a role only in the rise and spread of a religion; once it has taken hold, they are superfluous. And not only are they superfluous, any reliance on them for evidentiary purposes is morally censurable.