Christ's Miracles in General: Why He Did Them, by What Power, When They Began, and Whether They Show His Divinity (ST III q.43)

Orientation #

He opens with a reflection on the definition of belief, then states the plan: articles on miracles in general, then a question on particular kinds of miracles, then “strange as may seem,” a question on the Transfiguration. He notes some replies refer back to earlier texts “that we haven’t covered in this course.” The neighbouring classes treat Christ’s manner of teaching and, next, the miracles concerning demons and celestial bodies.

The class, in order #

1. Belief already seeks understanding (“it’s almost redundant”) #

Opening reflection before the text.

• Anselm’s “belief seeking understanding” (traced back in meaning to Augustine) is almost redundant, because Augustine’s definition of to believe, which Thomas follows in the secunda secundae, is already assentire cum cogitatione — to assent while thinking about it.
• Therefore if you are not trying to understand what you believe, according to your time and capacity, do you believe at all?
• Examples of the thinking involved: why three persons and not more or fewer; what the basis of the distinction is; and in these mysteries of Christ, “why did Christ want to be tempted?”
• The aim is something between raw belief and complete understanding, “never presuming to completely ever understand these things”; as Vatican I says, the assent of faith should not be blind.

2. Article 1, objections: ought Christ to have done miracles? (“an adulterous generation seeks a sign”) #

1. Deeds should harmonize with words; but Christ says an evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and none will be given but the sign of Jonah (Matthew 16).
2. The second coming is in power and majesty (Matthew 24), the first in weakness — “a man of sorrows and knowing infirmity” (Isaiah 53); miracles pertain to power, not weakness.
3. Christ came to save men through faith (Hebrews 12: “looking upon the originator of faith and the one who completes it”), but miracles diminish the merit of faith — “unless you see signs and prodigies, you do not believe.” Sed contra, from the person of his adversaries: “What are we to do, because this man does many signs?”

3. Article 1, corpus: two reasons miracles are given to men (“letters with the ring of the king”) #

He calls this “Thomas’ beautiful text here.” Divinely it is conceded to man to work miracles for two reasons:

1. First and chiefly, to confirm the truth someone teaches. Reason: things of divine faith exceed human reason and cannot be proven by human reasons, so they must be approved by the argument of divine power — when someone does works only God can do, what he says is believed to be said by God. Example: a man bearing letters sealed with the king’s ring is believed to speak the king’s will. Aside: Hamlet used the seal on the ring to change the document and send Guildenstern (and Rosencrantz) to execution in England.
2. Secondly, to show God’s presence in the man through the grace of the Holy Spirit — Galatians 3, “who gives you the Spirit and works miracles in you.” Example: the miracle required for canonization; but saints also work miracles during life, and then you see they must be holy. Both had to be manifested about Christ: that God was in him — not by the grace of adoption, but by the grace of union — and that his supernatural teaching was from God. Hence John 10: “if you don’t want to believe me, believe the works”; and his reproach, “if I had not done the works that no man ever did.”

4. Article 1, replies (“he did signs not on account of them whom he knew to be stony”) #

• To 1 (Chrysostom): either they would not see such a sign as they asked, namely one from heaven (they wanted fire from heaven); or he did signs not for them, whom he knew to be stony, but to cleanse others — so the signs are given not to them but to others.
• To 2: he came in the infirmity of flesh, shown in his sufferings, but nevertheless in the power of God, shown by miracles. Comment: in the gospels you find both — things revealing the weakness of the humanity (his cry on the cross) and things revealing the divinity.
• To 3: miracles diminish the merit of faith only so far as they show the hardness of those who will not accept what divine scripture shows except through miracles; but it is better that they be converted by miracles than remain unbelieving — 1 Corinthians, signs are given to the unfaithful that they be converted.
• Student exchange: eucharistic miracles told by the sisters — a man in doubt about the real presence who carried the host away in his napkin and found blood; the miracle at Santarém in Portugal, a woman who took the host for a superstitious good-luck purpose and found blood on her handkerchief. He remarks he does not know whether all such stories are true.

5. Article 2: did Christ do miracles by divine power? (“he was not able there to do any miracle”) #

Objections:

1. Divine power is omnipotent, but Mark 6 says he was not able to do any miracle in his own country.
2. It does not belong to God to pray, but Christ prayed in working miracles — raising Lazarus, the multiplication of loaves (Matthew 14).
3. What comes about by divine power cannot come about by a creature’s power; but the Pharisees said he casts out demons by Beelzebub. Aside: that saying “really shows their kind of malice” — one of the more vivid impressions of these men. Sed contra: John 14, “the Father remaining in me, he does these works.” Corpus: as had in the prima pars, true miracles can come about only by divine power, because God alone can change the order of nature, which pertains to the notion of a miracle. Comment: this is why modern scientists deny miracles — you cannot change the laws of nature. Pope Leo, Epistle to Flavian: in Christ two natures, the divine glowing by miracles, the human succumbing to injuries; but each acts with the communication of the other, the human nature being an instrument of the divine action and the human action gaining power from the divine.

6. Article 2, replies (“not to his absolute power, but to that which was suitable”) #

• To 1: “he was not able” refers not to his absolute power but to what could suitably come about — it was not congruent to do miracles among unbelievers; and it is added that “he wondered at their unbelief.” Compare Genesis 18, “I am not able to hide from Abraham what I am about to do.”
  • Discussion: the doing of miracles is even attributed to faith; he half-recalls Thomas’s reasons, and the one that sticks is Anaxagoras — the mind that moves things cannot be mixed with them; faith separates you from things, you are not tied to what you can sense, your mind is raised above things, and that is an aptness for power; also by faith you are first joined to God, a source of power. So there are two things to consider: miracles make the unfaithful faithful, yet faith makes one a fit doer of miracles. A student adds his earlier point: some miracles are done to provoke faith, others to confirm it.
• To 2 (Chrysostom): it must be believed both that Christ is from the Father and that he is equal to him; so he works some miracles with power, as his own, and some praying. In lesser ones he regards heaven (multiplication of loaves); in greater ones, which are only of God, he acts by his own power (forgiving sins, raising the dead). At Lazarus he lifted his eyes upward not from necessity but for example, saying “on account of the people standing around, that they may believe you sent me.”
• To 3: Christ expels demons otherwise than they are expelled by demonic power. By power of higher demons, a demon leaves the body while its dominion over the soul remains — for the devil does not act against his own kingdom. Christ expels from body and much more from the soul. Four disproofs of the blasphemy: (i) Satan is not divided against himself; (ii) the example of those who cast out demons by the Spirit of God; (iii) expelling a demon is impossible unless he be overcome by divine power; (iv) no agreement in work or effect — Satan disperses, Christ collects.

7. Article 3: did he begin his miracles at Cana? (“this was the beginning of the signs”) #

Objections:

1. The Book on the Infancy of the Savior (his footnote: Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, Hamburg) says Christ did many miracles in boyhood; the water into wine was in his thirtieth or thirty-first year.
2. He did miracles by divine power, which was in him from conception, when he was already God and man.
3. After baptism and temptation he began to gather disciples (Matthew 4), and disciples are gathered especially by miracles — Peter was stupefied at the catch of fish (Luke 5). Sed contra: John 2, “this was the beginning of the signs that Jesus did in Cana of Galilee.” Aside: “so we wine lovers, you know, we have some.” Corpus, two reasons: (i) miracles confirm his teaching, so he ought not work them before he began to teach, and he ought not teach before the perfect age, as was said on Christ’s baptism; (ii) he had to show his divinity in such a way that faith in the truth of his human nature suffered no prejudice — Chrysostom on John: had he begun in his first age, they would have estimated the incarnation a fantasy, an imagination, and would have handed him over to the cross before the opportune time.

8. Article 3, replies, and a digression on Saint Joseph (“lies and fictions”) #

• To 1 (Chrysostom on John): from the Baptist’s word “that he might be made known in Israel, for this I came baptizing with water,” it is manifest that the signs some say were done in boyhood are lies and fictions — had he done them, John would not have been ignorant of him, nor would the multitude have needed a teacher to point him out.
  • Student: St. Thérèse said she did not think Christ made clay pigeons come to life — “she had right faith.”
  • Digression: what it would be like living in a house with the Incarnate Word and the Immaculate Conception — “kind of inferiority complex”; maybe that is why Joseph was made head of the household. John Paul II’s writing on Joseph (an apostolic letter, not an encyclical; Leo XIII’s on Joseph was an encyclical): because of his providence over and preservation of the Child Jesus, Joseph is protector of the mystical body of Christ as well as of his human body — as in the litany of St. Joseph. Teresa of Avila’s devotion; her wish that his feast be moved out of Lent so it could be kept with festivity; her horn and drum in her cell. Side altars of the Blessed Virgin and of Joseph in parish churches (Nativity Parish, St. Paul), and brides kneeling before St. Joseph.
• To 2: divine power worked in Christ as was necessary for human salvation, for which he took flesh, so that our faith in the truth of his flesh suffered no prejudice.
• To 3: it pertains to the praise of the disciples that they followed him having seen no miracle (Gregory, in a homily). Chrysostom: signs are most necessary when disciples are already gathered, devout, and attentive. “And his disciples believed in him” does not mean they then first believed, but believed more diligently and perfectly; or “disciples” means his future disciples (Augustine, On the Consensus of the Evangelists). Aside: “Thomas knows these church fathers better than we do, that’s for darn sure.”

9. Cana as preparation for the Eucharist (his own talk: “preparing the way for the Eucharist”) #

A view of his own, added to Thomas.

• In the Eucharist bread and wine become the body and blood, but you do not see it; at Cana you see the water turned into wine — the accidents do not remain, so you can know the change by the senses. A student presses the disanalogy (in the Eucharist the accidents are kept; the bridegroom would not want water).
• The contingent circumstances — they ran short of wine, Mary felt sorry for them — fall under divine providence and were intended as the occasion of the miracle. So the miracle has many reasons, not only confirming the apostles’ faith then, but preparing the way for faith in the Eucharist.
• Supported by the order of John: chapter 2 here, chapter 6 the hard teaching where people walk away; the apostles, having seen water made wine, were disposed to accept his power.
• Aside on the formula “body and blood, soul and divinity” (Sister Faustina): soul and divinity are more important, but you start with body and blood, because he does not want anyone to doubt his human flesh; and body and blood are there by reason of the words of conversion, the soul and divinity by connection.

10. Article 4, objections: were the miracles sufficient to show his divinity? (“from the particular is not sufficiently shown the universal”) #

1. To be God and man is private to Christ — he insists on this translation: “people always translate ‘appropriate’ and ‘proper,’ but… it’s more private,” i.e. unique to him — yet his miracles were done by others too. Student exchange: Peter raised Tabitha; Paul raised the boy who fell from the ledge. Aside: a string of jokes about people and pets named Tabitha (Beatrix Potter’s Tabitha and Moppet), and about the dog that falls asleep during a homily.
2. Nothing is greater than divine power, yet John 14 says those who believe in him will do greater works. He flags the solution at once: Christ does it by his own power, the others by intercession — “in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up.”
3. From the particular the universal is not sufficiently shown; each miracle was a particular work, and divinity has universal power over all things. “So he’s got power over water and wine. Big deal.” Sed contra: John 5, “the works the Father gives me to do give testimony about me.”

11. Article 4, corpus: three heads on which the miracles suffice (“secundum tria”) #

1. By the very species of the works, which transcend every created power and so can come only from God — the man born blind: “from the ages it was not heard that anyone opened the eyes of one born blind; unless this man were from God he could do nothing.”
2. By the manner of doing them, as by his own power, not by praying as others do — Luke 6, “power went out from him and healed all.” Cyril: he did not take another’s power but, being naturally God, showed his own power upon the sick. Hence the innumerable miracles: Matthew 8, “he cast out spirits by his word and cured all who were ill.” Chrysostom on this text: note the multitude cured — the evangelists do not narrate each one, but in one word bring in an ineffable ocean of miracles. Hence John 5, “whatever things the Father does, these the Son does also in like manner” — Thomas always points to that “similiter,” meaning the Son acts as principal cause, not as instrument. Example: Michelangelo’s hammer and chisel did the statue, but as instruments, not in the same way he did.
3. From his teaching, in which he said he was God — which, unless true, would not have been confirmed by miracles done by divine power. Mark 1: “what is this new teaching, because in power he commands the unclean spirits and they obey him.” Asides: “How’s that for translation? They hired me to” — and the story of the Christian Brother at Laval who translated the philosophy-of-science text from French, whose publisher did not want the book but wanted to hire him as a French-English translator for life, the last thing he wanted. Also a jab at the “fly-by, run-by media” (Rush Limbaugh’s phrase).

12. Article 4, replies (“judge who is able, whether it is greater to create just”) #

• To 1: this is the objection of the Gentiles. Augustine, Epistle to Volusianus, reports their sneer: by what competent signs of such majesty — a larvalis cleansing, casting out demons, curing the sick, raising the dead? (He glosses larvalis: like a ghost, deathly, resembling a demon or evil spirit.) For God these are small. Augustine’s answer: the prophets did such things, but they prophesied the Lord Jesus and gave him great glory, and it was not absurd that he should do through them what he would do himself; nevertheless he did something private — born of a virgin, risen from the dead, ascended into heaven. To one who thinks these little, what more does he expect? That in taking on man he should have made another world? But no greater or equal world could come about; a lesser one would likewise be thought small. What others did, Christ did more excellently. Augustine on John 15 (“if I had not done works which no one else did”): nothing in Christ’s works seems greater than raising the dead, which the ancient prophets did; but Christ healed many vices, bad conditions and vexations with a power no ancient is read to have had, making each one whole — Mark, in whatever villages, towns or cities he entered, they placed the sick in the streets and asked that they touch his garment, and whoever touched were saved. The text “no one else did in them” is to be read as in them, not among or before them, because he healed them. And the things others did, they did through his power; the things he did, he did not through another’s. Aside: did Thomas have all these books to hand, or a photographic memory? “He had good secretaries”; perhaps a sufficient memory to recall this or that, and they could build it up — “but who knows?”
• To 2: Augustine asks what these greater works are. Perhaps that the sick were healed by the shadows of those passing by — is a shadow greater than the fringe of the garment? But when Christ said this he was commending the deeds of his words: “the Father remaining in me does his works” — and the fruit of those words was the faith of others; the apostles evangelizing, whole nations believed, where at his own mouth (the rich young man) not so many. So greater things he did through the apostles, “not signifying them alone: who believes in me… the works which I do he also will do, because he believes in me” — first I do, then he does, because I bring it about that he does it. And which works, unless that from an impious man you make a just one, which Christ does in him but not without him. “And greater, I say, is this than to create heaven and earth” — for heaven and earth will pass away, but the justification of the predestined will remain. Judge who is able whether it is greater to create the just or to justify the impious; if equal in power, this is more of mercy. Nor are we forced to understand all Christ’s works, but perhaps those he was doing in that hour, the words of faith; and it is less to preach the words of justice, which he did without us, than to justify the impious, which he works in us so that we also do it. “So he created us without us, but he won’t redeem us without us.”
• To 3: when a particular work is proper or private to some agent, that particular work shows the whole power of the agent. Example: to reason is private to man, so a man is shown to be a man from reasoning about any particular thing proposed. Likewise, since by his own power he did miracles only God could do, Christ is sufficiently shown to be God from whatever miracle he does by his own power. He closes: “a little breakdown before the next question here.”

His words #

• “assentire cum cogitatione” — to assent while thinking about it; Augustine’s definition of to believe, followed by Thomas.
• “grace of union” — as against the grace of adoption; what the miracles show of God’s presence in Christ.
• “private” — his preferred rendering of proprium, against “appropriate” and “proper”; unique to the one agent.
• “larvalis” — ghostly, deathly, resembling a demon or evil spirit; glossed in the Gentiles’ sneer.
• “similiter” / “in like manner” — the word marking the Son as principal cause, not instrument.
• “fly-by, run-by media” — Rush Limbaugh’s phrase, applied to the evangelists’ brevity about the crowds cured.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 43, a. 1 — whether Christ ought to have done miracles (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 43, a. 2 — whether by divine power
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 43, a. 3 — the time he began
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 43, a. 4 — whether sufficient to show his divinity; includes the long Augustine citations (Epistle to Volusianus; on John 15; on John 14)

Mentioned

• Augustine and Anselm on faith seeking understanding; Vatican I on the assent of faith
• Thomas, Secunda secundae, on the definition of belief; Prima pars on miracles; earlier questions on Christ’s baptism
• Scripture cited within the articles: Matthew 4, 8, 16, 24; Mark 1, 6; Luke 5, 6; John 2, 5, 10, 11, 14, 15; Acts (Tabitha, the boy who fell); 1 Corinthians; Galatians 3; Hebrews 12; Isaiah 53; Genesis 18
• Chrysostom, Cyril, Gregory (a homily), Pope Leo, Epistle to Flavian; Augustine, On the Consensus of the Evangelists
• Book on the Infancy of the Savior (Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, Hamburg)
• Leo XIII’s encyclical and John Paul II’s apostolic letter on St. Joseph; litany of St. Joseph; Teresa of Avila; Thérèse; Sister Faustina; Anaxagoras; Shakespeare, Hamlet

His questions #

• Is “belief seeking understanding” not redundant, given the definition of belief? Almost — to believe is to assent while thinking about it, so seeking understanding is already contained in it.
• Why is it conceded to men to do miracles at all? To confirm the truth being taught, and to show God’s presence in the man through grace.
• Do miracles diminish the merit of faith? Only so far as they show hardness of heart; better converted by miracles than left unbelieving.
• How could Christ “not be able” to do miracles in his own country? Not absolute power but suitability: it was not congruent to work miracles among unbelievers.
• Why did Christ sometimes pray when working miracles? To show he is from the Father; in lesser works he looks to heaven, in the greater he acts by his own power.
• Could Beelzebub do what Christ does? No — demons free the body while keeping hold of the soul; Christ expels from the soul as well.
• Did Christ do miracles as a boy? No — those accounts are lies and fictions; he began at Cana, after the perfect age, lest the incarnation be thought a fantasy.
• What are the “greater works” believers would do? Chiefly the justification of the impious through the apostles’ preaching — greater than creating heaven and earth.
• Can a particular miracle show the universal power of divinity? Yes, when the work is private to the agent, as reasoning shows a man to be a man.