MIRACLE PLAYS. See Religious Dramas.
The concept of miracles, found in nearly all religions, is due to the belief in the power of the supernatural over the world, either in whole or in part. The types of miracles are as manifold as the religions themselves, ranging from cosmic phenomena (especially of creation and eschatology) and divine manifestations to the founders of religions, to omens and warnings, rewards and punishments, and responses to prayer and priestly power.
The Bible bears witness to the general belief in
miracles, although here, in contradistinction to
other oriental religions, miracles are, in general,
fewer in number and more religious in character.
This is in keeping with the spirituality of the Biblical concept of God, who, though omnipotent
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In the centuries following primitive Christianity the miracles of the Spirit came gradually to be depreciated, while the inner transformation of the Christian received an interpretation of mere psychology. The desire for miracles was gratified by legends of the apostles, martyrs, and confessors, or, still later, of hermits and monks; Jew- s. PatdB- ish eschatology was adopted with all tic and its marvels; and even a series of de- Scholastic moniac miracles was taken from early Views. folklore. Side by side with this practical belief in miracles was evolved the theory regarding them. The basis for this was laid by Augustine. Holding that the world is full of miracles and is itself the greatest of all miracles, yet realizing that the marvels of creation become commonplace, he taught that God, who alone can create, caused new miracles to appear, though he had possessed them from all eternity. While these miracles apparently contradict the laws of nature, they do not really do so, since God, being the crea tor of nature, can create nothing opposed to it. The elements of the world contain, in addition to their " visible seeds," certain " hidden seeds," which are the source of miracles. There is, therefore, a hidden and inner operation of God in addition to the operation of natural causes. In themselves both these operations are equally marvelous and are simply different components of one and the same creation. The difference between miraculous and natural events is, therefore, not objective but sub jective-" the miracle does not violate nature, but only nature as now known " (De civitate Dei, XXI., viii. 2). The Neo-Platonic theory of Augustine never vanished, though the Aristotelian causal the ory of the universe maintained by Thomas Aquinas contested its supremacy in the Church. Nothing can happen outside the sum total of the system of divine governance, and in the great systematized order called the world God works as the first cause which simply determines a long chain of causes. In this sum total God can make no change, but he both can and does substitute some individual secondary causes for others. The result is a miracle, and God accordingly created cosmic order with the condition that he himself might be directly operative in it otherwise than through the usual and regularly operative causes. Miracles are accordingly defined as "those things which are done by God contrary to causes known to us" (Summa I., quaest. cv. art. 6). Miracles are thus placed within the sphere of divine governance, the sole difference between them and ordinary natural phenomena being that in the latter God is the first in a causal series, while in the case of miracles he directly intervenes. Not all direct intervention of God, however, is to be considered a miracle, this category including only deviations from the course of nature, whereas .justification and creation are not miracles.
Luther held that God had caused visible miracles in the early stages of Christianity to foster belief in it and that these, subsequently proving unnecessary, were replaced by the far greater
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