http://www.dr-fnlee.org/docs8/
Boot Camp: Correcting Anglicostals, Pentecostals, Charismatics & Other Enthusiasts: Gunnery Sergeant, Mr. (Rev. Dr. Prof.) F.N. Lee
“Welcome to boot camp. Recruit, life as you know it has just ended.” (Recruit’s private thought: “Oh no, what did I get myself into?”) The Pentecostalists aggressively pushed themselves forward; the pushback and conquest is undertaken.
A theological study about the nature of miracles and their cessation at inscripturation but the continuation of pseudo-miracles according to revealed religion from the fall of the first Adam till the second coming of the Second Adam.)
And now, for corrections from Gunnery Sergeant F. Nigel Lee:
To this, the orthodox Augustine then replied:12 "We admit that what is contrary to the ordinary course of human experience, is commonly spoken of as 'contrary to nature.' Thus the Apostle uses the words, 'If thou art cut out of the wild olive and engrafted contrary to nature in the good olive.'" See: Romans 11:24.
But, explained Augustine, "contrary to nature is here used in the sense of contrary to human experience of the course of nature -- such as that a wild olive-branch engrafted into a good olive-tree should bring forth the fatness of the good olive-tree, instead of wild berries.
But God -- the Author and Creator of all natures -- does nothing contrary to nature.
For whatever is done by Him Who appoints all natural order and measure and proportion, must be 'natural' in every case. And man himself acts contrary to nature only when he sins...."There is, however, no impropriety in saying that God does a thing 'contrary to nature,' when it is contrary to what we know of nature. For we give the name 'nature' to the usual common course of nature; and whatever God does contrary to this, we call a 'prodigy' or a 'miracle.' But against the SUPREME law of nature, which is beyond the knowledge both of the ungodly and of weak believers, God never acts -- any more than He acts against Himself."
Augustine therefore believed that while a few 'miracles' were creative (or supralapsarianly immanent), nearly all were recreative (or infralapsarianly transcendent) and focussed precisely on Christ's redemptive work. Unfathomable by man, the latter not only amaze but especially fill the human beneficiary with great gratitude.
They were never superior to faith, but given merely to strengthen the faith of God's elect and to confound the unbelief of the reprobate. Miracles are not contrary to nature as such, but only contrary to nature as humanly known. Not miracles but only sin is contrary to nature -- which latter, once and for all laid down and given, is still maintained by the Triune God.
Details of Augustine's further views on miracles, will be dealt with later below.13 Such include his views regarding: the occurrence of remarkable events in his own day; the nonoccurrence then of events like the miracles of Biblical times; and the demonic nature of pseudo-miracles.
10. Worsening understanding of miracles in the Middle Ages
Even Albert the Great still rightly followed Augustine in asserting that God, Who had implanted the possibility of miracles in nature, never contravenes it. Indeed, Albert also distinguished between miracles and wonders -- attributing the former only to God, but ascribing the latter to human or demoniacal use of generally-unknown nature powers in unexpected ways.14
It was, however, the leading Roman Catholic Theologian Thomas Aquinas who (on miracles and on other matters) moved the Church radically away from Scripture. This is seen especially in his definition: "A miracle is something out of the order of nature."15
Indeed, with the adage miraculi nomen ab ad-mir-atione sumitur, he also derived16 the Latin word for 'mir-acle' from its root-word for 'ad-mir-ation.' Yet while this is linguistically correct for Latin and other cognate Japhethitic tongues, it does not grasp the Old-Semitic concept.
Thomas's definition opposed Augustine's Biblical doctrine that miracles are at variance only with known nature, and that they deal specifically with re-creation after the fall. For Thomas wrongly taught that miracles are opposed to nature as such -- and not essentially illustrative precisely of God's redemptive revelation (and liberation of nature too from sin).
To the extent Aquinas's view of miracles could also include the gracious work of Christ the Saviour, Thomas ended up by opposing grace and its miracles -- to nature.
Yet he should have opposed both nature and grace -- to sin.17
Thomas thus defined miracles as interventions by God into the normal course of nature, and as breaches of the laws of nature (contra naturam). Miracles, he said, are deeds of God "above and against the order of nature" -- deeds "which He Himself creates." For "by miracles, the natural order is temporarily suspended."
This incorrect definition is indeed harmful. It promotes the misrepresentation that nature usually operations by itself -- unless and until God occasionally concerns Himself with such earthly things, by way of miracles.
In actual fact, however, God is always engaged within nature. There He perpetuates its laws which He Himself instituted and maintains. For God is not only transcendent above but also essentially immanent within His creation (once it had been created).
Indeed, God never suspends His laws (e.g. the Ten Commandments); no, not even His laws for nature. Psalm 119:89f. Such a representation is radically false, and indeed very unworthy of any Christian view about God.18
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