Miracles

Article I — The Nature of a Miracle

I. The word “miracle,” as its etymology suggests, means simply “a fact or event causing wonder.” St. Thomas (Contra Gentes, Bk. III, c. 101) gives what may be called a nominal definition: those facts or events are called miracles “which are accomplished by God outside the order of nature commonly observed.”

II. The miracle as a motive of credibility. The Vatican Council describes a miracle as a “divine fact clearly showing the omnipotence of God.” A miracle is therefore above the powers of the whole of created nature, including the angelic, and is distinguished both from extraordinary natural facts and from diabolic deceptions. It is likewise distinct from ordinary divine works — such as the constant creation of souls — which follow the usual order of things and cannot, for that reason, serve as a sign of Revelation. Some Catholic writers (Le Grand, Brugère, La Hogue) have unwisely defined a miracle merely as a fact above human power but not above angelic or diabolic power — a definition that falls short of the true notion.

III. Heterodox notions of the miracle.

(A) The Determinist view holds a miracle to be merely an extraordinary natural fact not yet scientifically explained, since the physical laws of nature are held to be as unchangeable as mathematical or metaphysical laws — on this ground Spinoza denied the very possibility of a miracle. Deists likewise deny that God attends to particular or individual events; Leibniz, like Spinoza, maintained that God’s choice of action was morally necessary and could not deviate from the established order. Some writers of this school were willing to attribute certain wonders — the changing of water into wine at Cana, for instance — to angelic rather than to strictly divine power, on the supposition that a miracle properly surpassing all the powers of nature would amount to God changing the whole course of the universe. Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Sabatier hold, similarly, that an event may be natural — that is, in accordance with unknown laws of nature — and yet be called miraculous simply as an effect of divine benevolence.

(B) The Agnostic view holds that a miracle is not an infringement of the laws of nature but only an infringement of our own subjective view of those laws. Poincaré, in La Science et l’Hypothèse, treats the very idea of the stability of nature’s laws as a product of our subjective way of regarding them; on this view an exception to the laws of nature, properly speaking, is not a miracle at all, since we do not know all the laws of nature and therefore cannot be certain that a genuinely transcendent cause has intervened. Blondel and Laberthonnière, in the same spirit, describe miracles as “derogations aux apparences anthropomorphiques” and “derogations à un ordre illusoire” — departures merely from anthropomorphic appearances, or from an illusory order. Le Roy goes further and regards a miracle as nothing more than an extraordinary effect of vehement faith.

IV. The Catholic idea of the miracle. The true, and not merely nominal, definition of a miracle is: a sensible fact produced by God in the world, which fact is beyond the order of action of the whole of created nature. This definition rests on St. Thomas’s exposition (Summa, I, q. 110, a. 4), and unfolds into five elements:

1. It is “a sensible fact.”
2. It is “produced by God” as principal cause, who at times uses creatures as His instruments.
3. It occurs “in the world,” inasmuch as miracles are intended to affect mankind.
4. It is “beyond the order of nature,” though never beyond the order of Divine Providence.
5. It is “beyond the order of action of the whole of created nature” — not merely beyond the inclination of one particular created nature (otherwise throwing a stone upward would itself be a miracle). A miracle is beyond the order of action of created nature, but not beyond its order of being.

A miracle thus exceeds, effectively, all the powers of nature: it is supernatural modally, whereas grace is supernatural intrinsically, and is for that reason beyond even the order of being of created nature — what theology calls “supernatural as to substance.” A miracle, by contrast, is only effectively or modally supernatural; what is “supernatural as to substance” is that which is intrinsically or essentially supernatural, as, for example, sanctifying grace.

From this account it follows that a miracle differs: (a) from natural extraordinary facts, which are fortuitous only from the standpoint of secondary causes, but foreseen from the standpoint of Divine Providence; (b) from diabolic deceptions, which are contrived to resemble miracles; (c) from the ordinary works of God — conservation, the divine “premotion” of creatures, the creation of souls, the justification of the sinner; and (d) from ordinary providential facts, such as an answer to prayer.

Article II — The Possibility of a Miracle

I. The possibility of miracles denied. (1) Determinists such as Spinoza deny that God is free to work miracles at all; Deists deny God’s exercise of particular providence; Leibniz likewise held that God’s course of action was morally necessitated. (2) Agnostics hold that the powers of nature are not fully known, and that a fact or event therefore cannot be characterized as miraculous with certainty; others hold that the laws of nature are themselves contingent, so that an exception to them would not, in any case, be miraculous. (3) Huxley’s argument against miracles runs thus: “When repeated and minute examination never reveals a break in the chain of causes and effects, and the whole edifice of our practical life is built upon our faith in its continuity, the belief that that chain has never been broken and will never be broken becomes one of the strongest and most justifiable of human convictions. And it must be admitted to be a reasonable request, if we ask those who would have us put faith in the actual occurrence of interruptions of that order to produce evidence in favour of their view, not only equal, but superior, in weight to that which leads us to adopt ours” (cf. Hume, English Men of Letters series, c. 7).

II. Proof of the possibility of a miracle. St. Thomas states the proof in syllogistic form:

Major: A free cause, on whom depends the application of laws that are only hypothetically necessary, and who is not bound to them, can act independently of and above them. Minor: But God is an omnipotent free Cause, on whom depends the application of laws only hypothetically necessary, nor is He bound to the present natural order. Conclusion: Therefore God can act independently of and above the whole course of created nature — that is, He can work a miracle.

Proof of the Major (a posteriori). A man throws a stone upward: he thereby suspends, for the moment, the effect of the law of gravitation, without violating that law, for the stone’s natural tendency to fall remains present throughout, even while it is miraculously held up. So too a composer may produce a symphony that transcends the ordinary rules of his art without violating those rules — the exception, in each case, confirms the law, because it stands above it rather than against it. St. Thomas noted this distinction with his usual precision: in igne fornacis remanebat ordo, licet non combureret tres pueros — “in the fire of the furnace the order remained, though it did not burn the three youths.” Hence the absolute possibility of a miracle in no way conflicts with the ordinary stability of nature’s laws.

Proof of the Major (a priori). God can exercise not only the “liberty of exercise” (libertas exercitii) — the freedom to act or not to act — but also the “liberty of specification” (libertas specificationis) — the freedom to decree this effect or that — since He is in no way bound to the present order of things. Absolute necessity is independent of any condition and is founded on the very essence of a thing, as when the angles of a plane triangle equal two right angles; mathematical laws and the great principles of metaphysics (contradiction, causality) are necessary in this sense. Hypothetical necessity, by contrast, is that which follows only on the presence of some extrinsic efficient or final cause: granted that such an agent acts under natural conditions, the effect follows necessarily. Fire burns because God has freely so determined it, but that same action can be suspended by the very Cause who freely instituted the law in the first place. The laws of nature express only the manner in which created things act; they hold good because of their efficient cause, and are therefore only hypothetically necessary.

Proof of the Minor. God is an omnipotent free Cause on whom the application of these hypothetically necessary laws depends, and He is not limited by them.

(A) God is an omnipotent free Cause. (a) God is the supreme immaterial and intelligent First Cause; the Divine will follows the Divine intellect and is free with regard to particular goods, which are not required for infinite perfection. God is accordingly free with regard to His works ad extra — free, for instance, to create or not to create. The nature of created things, being determined, confines their actions, free or necessary, within fixed limits; but the Divine nature is not determined, and its effects proceed according to the free choice of will and intellect. (b) God, being infinite in power as in every other respect, can accomplish anything that is not intrinsically impossible.

(B) The application of these hypothetically necessary laws depends on the Divine will, which is not bound to them. (a) Just as God is free to create or not to create, He is free to withhold the concursus necessary for the operation of a created agent. (b) Hence it is not repugnant that fire should fail to burn, should God withhold His concursus. When an end is strictly proportioned to the things made for it, the wisdom of the maker is confined to a single determined order; but the Divine Goodness, as an end, exceeds created things out of all proportion, and Divine Wisdom is accordingly not bound to any one order of things. From this follows the freedom not only of exercise but of specification.

Conclusion. God can act both negatively and positively upon the laws of nature: negatively, by impeding the natural action of a thing (as with fire); positively, in the threefold way already noted in the classification of miracles. The object of miracles is the confirmation of salutary truth, an end of sufficient importance that God should act beyond and above the order of nature for its sake.

Corollary. No creature can work a miracle by its own power. When a creature works a miracle, it receives from God a transient supernatural power while at the same time employing its own natural power. Can an evil man be the instrument of a miracle? To one who preaches the true Faith and invokes the name of Christ — even though he himself be not a good man — the power of working a miracle may still be granted, in confirmation of the doctrine he preaches.

Hume’s objection runs: there is physical certitude of the uniformity of nature’s laws, but only moral certitude, based on human testimony, of the occurrence of miracles; since physical certitude is stronger than moral certitude, belief in miracles is unjustified. The objection overlooks the distinction between the suspension of a law of nature and its violation. Experience does indeed justify us — in Huxley’s own words — in regarding the non-violation of nature’s laws as “one of the strongest and most justifiable of human convictions”; but the mere suspension of those laws is, by contrast, an everyday occurrence — every time a falling body is caught and held, the law of gravitation is suspended without being violated. A miracle, then, involves no conflict between two kinds of certitude: physical certitude safeguards only the non-violation of a law, and has no bearing on a miracle, which involves no such violation. Adequate testimony therefore suffices for the credibility of a miracle.

Nor is the objection valid that a miracle would contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics, for that law applies only to purely physical events and expressly excludes external agency from the events it governs, whereas a miracle essentially involves an agent from outside the physical order. Nor does a miracle contradict the law of the Conservation of Energy, which likewise applies only to purely physical events, and which in any case allows for an immense quantity of energy normally dissipated, far exceeding whatever a miracle might require. Professor W. E. Hobson (The Domain of Natural Science, 1923) writes that the fact we have no assurance that all possible forms of energy occurring in physical phenomena are known to us “makes it impossible to conceive that the principle [of the Conservation of Energy] should admit of anything like complete empirical verification.”

Article III — The Discernibility of a Miracle

I. The question at issue. Renan, in the introduction to his Life of Christ, writes: “We do not say that a miracle is impossible; we say that up to the present time no miracle has been proved.” Kant and his Agnostic followers hold substantially the same view. Mr. H. W. Paul, in his sketch of Matthew Arnold, remarks of educated laymen of the Established Church that “Christianity without miracles and without dogmatic theology is not only practicable, but has sufficed for some of the best Christians that ever lived. It is probably the religion of most educated laymen in the Church of England to-day.” Le Roy and some Modernists hold that faith alone can discern a miracle.

The principal objection raised against the discernibility of a miracle is this: “We do not know all the powers and laws of nature.” Hermes, following Kant, maintained that only a “practical moral certitude” could be had regarding miracles.

Some recent apologists reply that it is not necessary to know all the powers of nature; it suffices to be able to judge, in practice, what cannot be done in given circumstances, since the laws of nature are fixed to produce one effect in given circumstances, whereas in a miracle the same circumstances produce an altogether different effect — a clearly organic disease, for instance, is not cured by the mere power of imagination or by hypnotic suggestion.

This reply, while true as far as it goes, does not probe deeply enough into the nature of the miraculous work itself; and some who use it claim too much when they judge a miracle simply from the prayer by which, in their view, it was obtained — antecedent prayer is rightly considered by theologians as one of the circumstances that help to discern a miracle, but it is not the primary criterion for discerning a fact that exceeds even the unknown powers of nature.

A deeper solution notes that although we do not know positively all the powers of nature, we do know negatively what nature cannot do: the combination of oxygen and hydrogen does not yield chlorine; the sowing of wheat does not yield roses; a human voice does not calm storms or raise the dead. Certain effects can be produced by God alone, since they exceed all created powers, even those still unknown to us.

1° Proof from natural reason — the common consent of mankind. The common consent of mankind, of every time and nation, cannot be false; and this universal consent recognizes that certain effects — raising the dead, giving sight to one born blind, healing incurable disease, multiplying a material substance, the instantaneous change of one substance into another, the knowledge of secret thoughts and future contingent things, the sudden strengthening of a human will to heroic acts — postulate the direct action of God.

2° Proof from philosophic reason. It can be shown that the supernatural character of miracles of the first, second, and even third order is, in different degrees, certain.

Major: It is metaphysically certain that God alone can immediately produce or change being as such — matter, material substance apart from its accidents, the intellectual soul. Minor: But many miracles of the first, second, and third order necessarily and clearly imply just such immediate changes. Conclusion: Therefore it is metaphysically certain that these miracles can be wrought by God alone.

Proof of the Major. Only a universal cause, capable of immediately producing a universal effect, can immediately change that effect, since the immediate change of a being presupposes the same universality of causal power as its immediate production. (a) God alone can produce being as such — that is, can create — since a universal effect must be ascribed to a universal cause, and being is the most universal of all effects; creation, moreover, involves no pre-existing potentiality (it is the productio totius rei ex nihilo sui et subjecti, the production of substantial being without any pre-existing material), and so postulates an infinite cause. God alone, who creates, can therefore change being as such. (b) Divine power is likewise required to exercise immediate influence upon the substance of the intellectual soul and upon the faculties of intellect and will, since these are essentially directed to universal truth and universal good, and can accordingly be moved, in their inmost substance, only by the one universal agent, God.

Proof of the Minor. Miracles of the first order necessarily imply such immediate change of being. The Church teaches that in the Mass the miracle of transubstantiation is wrought; here we are concerned only with what that teaching implies. Transubstantiation involves a change of being as such — not a merely formal change, in which the underlying matter remains the same, but a change of the whole being of bread into the whole substance of the Body of Christ. Created agents can effect only formal changes; every change that occurs in conformity with the laws of nature is a formal change. God alone, being infinite, has an action that extends to the whole nature of being. Similarly, the co-existence of two bodies in the same place — as when Christ entered the Cenacle while the doors remained closed — requires divine power, since one substance must then remain distinct from another without occupying a place of its own. (St. Thomas notably holds that bodily bi-location, strictly speaking, is not possible even to God, since it would involve a contradiction; in recorded cases where testimony justifies belief, the body is really present in the one place, and only its appearance — produced by God or by an angel — is present in the other.)

Miracles of the second order are illustrated by the raising of Lazarus:

Major: The soul is united to the body by its substantial being, as the form of the body. Minor: But resurrection is the substantial reunion of a separated soul with the matter of a body, without the mediation of any previously existing accidental dispositions. Conclusion: Resurrection therefore implies an immediate power over matter and over the substantial being of the soul, and so postulates divine action.

The Major is established from the fact that the soul is the radical principle of vegetative, sensitive, and rational life alike, that the specific difference of man is derived from the soul, and that unless the soul were united to the body by its very substantial being, the natural unity of man would itself be destroyed.

The supernatural character of miracles of the third order is generally known only with moral, not metaphysical, certitude, from the physical and moral circumstances that surround them. The change of water into wine at Cana was probably the immediate production of the substantial form of wine out of the potentiality of the water — a formal, not a creative, change, yet one that could be accomplished only by one who has immediate power over matter itself. The multiplication of the loaves, too, was probably accomplished not by creation but by the addition of matter transformed into bread — a formal change in extraneous matter, not the transubstantiation of an entire being.

Certain physical conditions serve as criteria of a genuine miraculous cure: (1) a grave illness whose cure is impossible or extremely difficult by natural means; (2) the illness must not be at a stage where a favourable change might naturally be expected; (3) any medicine used must be either untaken or demonstrably useless; (4) the cure must be sudden; (5) the cure must be complete, without any preceding notable decrease of symptoms or crisis; (6) there must be no return of the disease; (7) there must be no other adequate natural explanation.

The corresponding moral circumstances are traditionally summarized in seven queries: Cur — the end or object of the miracle should be the glory of God; Quis — by whom is it worked, for if worked by an evil instrument in confirmation of false doctrine, it cannot come from God; Quid — a work contrary to truth cannot be a genuine miracle; Ubi — the surrounding circumstances and associates must be blameless; Quibus auxiliis — was it accomplished through invocation of the divine name; Quomodo — was it accomplished with reverence and humility; Quando — is it, as noted above, without natural explanation. True miracles are known by their fruits: the promotion of the worship of God, and the reformation of morals.

Discernment of a miracle as to its real existence. (1) The supernatural character of a miracle concerns its mode of production, while the bare fact — the restoration of sight or of speech — is obvious to the senses. (2) The historical occurrence of certain miracles was certain, with physical certitude, to those who witnessed them. (3) Some miracles of the third order are only morally certain, both as to their occurrence and as to their supernatural character. (4) Human testimony gives moral certitude of the existence of miracles generally. (5) Some miracles — the Resurrection of Christ above all — were known to witnesses with physical certitude as to their real existence, a fact established by Scripture and by reason.

False Miracles: Magic, Spiritism, and Hypnotism

Magic may be either natural — due to sleight of hand — or diabolic. The existence of spirits, good and evil, is attested by Scripture (Ex. 7; Acts 8:9, 13:8, 16:16; 2 Pet. 2:4), and evil spirits are able to simulate miracles: they can move bodies locally, and they can attempt, and sometimes succeed, in influencing the human imagination from without.

The phenomena of hypnotism and spiritism may be classified as: (1) mechanical phenomena, such as table-turning and the apparent movement of heavy bodies; (2) physiological and sensitive phenomena — in the hypnotic state the senses are sometimes morbidly acute, and the school of La Salpêtrière distinguishes a threefold hypnotic state of lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism; (3) intellectual phenomena, such as an unusual power of declamation, or fluent speech in languages imperfectly known to the subject.

None of the current naturalistic theories — the materialistic theory of a magnetic fluid, the theory of the power of imagination, the theory of animism (occult powers latent in the soul), the theory of metempsychosis — succeeds in explaining all these phenomena. In cases of spiritualistic séances, where the element of conscious fraud can be eliminated, the residue must be attributed to the action of evil spirits. Many of the supposed achievements of spiritism are indeed cases of fraud, but some are too well attested to be dismissed; yet the messages delivered through mediums are usually trivial, and sometimes impious or downright obscene, betraying their origin plainly enough by their fruits.

Article IV — The Probative Force of a Miracle

I. The teaching of the Church. The Vatican Council defines that miracles are the most certain signs of Divine Revelation, and are accommodated to the intelligence of all (cf. John 10:25–38, 15:24).

II. The nature of the proof. Proof by miracle is neither strictly a priori nor a posteriori, but proceeds from a most certain sign: as St. Thomas observes, when a man brings letters sealed with the royal seal, the subject-matter of the letters is manifestly understood to come from the sovereign (Summa, III, q. 43, a. 1).

III. The miracle as a most certain motive of credibility. (A) The foundation of its probative force lies in this: were a miracle wrought in confirmation of false doctrine, God — the source of all truth and holiness — would thereby be bearing witness to what is false, which is impossible. (B) The condition of its probative force is that there be an explicit or at least implicit declaration connecting the miracle with the truth it is meant to confirm — for miracles wrought in the name of God, in confirmation of some revealed truth to be accepted by all, cannot be false. Prophecy, it may be noted here, differs from a miracle in that it belongs to the intellectual order, whereas a miracle belongs to the order of sense.