02-Chapter 1. On The Names Of The Miracles
Chapter 1. On The Names Of The Miracles
Every discussion about a thing will best proceed from an investigation of the name or names which it bears; for the name seizes and presents the most distinctive features of the thing, embodying them for us in a word. In the name we have the true declaration of the’ innermost nature of the thing; we have a witness to that which the universal sense of men, finding its utterance in language, has ever felt thus to lie at its heart; and if we would learn to know the thing, we must start with seeking accurately to know the name which it bears. In the discussion upon which now we are entering, there is not one name only, but many, to consider; for it is a consequence of that which just has been said, that where we have to do with aught which in many ways is significant, the names also will inevitably be many, since no one will exhaust all its meaning. Each of these will embody a portion of its essential qualities, will present it upon a single side; and not from the contemplation exclusively of any one, but only of all of these together, will any adequate conception of that which we desire to understand be obtained. Thus what we commonly call miracles, are in the sacred Scriptures termed sometimes “wonders,” sometimes “signs,” sometimes “powers,” sometimes simply “works.” These titles they continually bear, in addition to some others, which are of rarer occurrence and will easily range themselves under one or other of these;—on each of which I would fain say a few words, before attempting to make any further advance in the subject.
1. To begin then with the name “wonder,” [1] in which the effect of astonishment, which the work produces upon the beholders, is transferred to the work itself, an effect often graphically portrayed by the Evangelists when relating our Lord’s miracles (Mark 2:12; Mark 4:41; Mark 6:51; Mark 7:37. cf. Acts 3:10-11), it will at once be felt that this does but touch the outside of the matter. The ethical meaning of the miracle would be wholly lost, were blank astonishment or mere wonder all which it aroused; since the same effect might be produced by a thousand meaner causes. Indeed it is not a little remarkable, rather is it profoundly characteristic of the miracles of the N. T., as Origen noted long ago,[2] that this name “wonders” is never applied to them but in connexion with some other name. They are continually “signs and wonders” (Acts 14:3; Rom 15:19; Mat 24:24; Heb 2:4); or “signs” alone (John 2:11; Acts 8:6; Rev 13:13); or “powers” alone (Mark 6:14; Acts 19:11); but never “wonders” alone. [3] Not that the miracle, considered simply as a wonder, as an astonishing event which the beholders can reduce to no law with which they are acquainted, is even as such without its meaning and its purpose; that purpose being forcibly to startle men from the dull dream of a sense-bound existence; and, however it may not be itself an appeal to the spiritual in man, yet to act as a summons to him that he now open his eyes to the spiritual appeal which is about to be addrest to him (Acts 14:8-18).
2. But the miracle, besides being a “wonder,” is also a “sign,”[4] a token and indication of the near presence and working of God. In this word the ethical end and purpose of the miracle comes out the most prominently, as in “wonder” the least. They are signs and pledges of something more than and beyond themselves (Isa 7:11; Isa 38:7 [5]; valuable, not so much for what they are, as for what they indicate of the grace and power of the doer, or of the connexion in which he stands with a higher world. Oftentimes they are thus seals of power set to the person who accomplishes them (“the Lord confirming the word by signs following,” Mark 16:20; Acts 14:3; Heb 2:4); legitimating acts, by which he claims to be attended to as a messenger from God. [6] We find the word continually used in senses such as these. Thus, “What sign showest thou” (John 2:18)? was the question which the Jews asked, when they wanted the Lord to justify the things which He was doing, by showing that He had especial authority to do them. Again they say, “We would see a sign from Thee” (Mat 12:38); “Show us a sign from heaven” (Mat 16:1). St. Paul speaks of himself as having “the signs of an apostle” (2Co 12:12), in other words, the tokens which should mark him out as such. Thus, too, in the O.T., when God sends Moses to deliver Israel He furnishes him with two “signs.” He warns him that Pharaoh will require him to legitimate his mission, to produce his credentials that he is indeed God’s ambassador, and equips him with the powers which shall justify him as such, which, in other words, shall be his “signs” (Exo 7:9-10). He “gave a sign” to the prophet, whom He sent to protest against the will-worship of Jeroboam (1Ki 13:3). [7] At the same time it may be convenient here to observe that the “sign” is not of necessity a miracle, although only as such it has a place in our discussion. Many a common matter may be a “sign” or seal set to the truth of some word, the announcement of which goes along with it; so that when that “sign” comes true, it may be accepted as a pledge that the greater matter, which was, as it were, bound up with it, shall also come true in its time. Thus the Angels give to the shepherds for “a sign” their finding of the Child wrapt in swaddling clothes in a manger (Luk 2:12. cf. Exo 3:12).[8] Samuel gives to Saul three “signs” that God has indeed appointed him king over Israel, and only the last of these is linked with aught supernatural (1Sa 10:1-9). The prophet gave Eli the death of his two sons as a “sign” that his threatening word should come true (1Sa 2:34. cf. Jer. 44:29, 38). God gave to Gideon a “sign” in the camp of the Midianites of the victory which he should win (Jdg 7:9-15), though it does not happen that the word occurs in that narration.[9] (cf. 2Ki 7:2; 2Ki 7:17-20). Or it is possible for a man, under a strong conviction that the hand of God is leading him, to set such or such a contingent event as a “sign” to himself, the falling out of which in this way or in that he will accept as an intimation from God of what He would have him to do. Examples of this also are not uncommon in Scripture (Gen 24:14-21; Jdg 6:36-40; 1Sa 14:8-13). Very curious, and standing by themselves, are the signs which shall only come to pass, after that of which they were the signs has actually befallen; but which shall still serve to confirm it, as having been wrought directly of God. We have examples of this, Exo 3:12; 2Ki 19:29.
3. Frequently also the miracles are styled “powers” or “mighty works” that is, of God.[10] As in the term “wonder” or “miracle,” the effect is transferred and gives a name to the cause, so here the cause gives its name to the effect.[11] The “power” dwells originally in the divine Messenger (Acts 6:8; Acts 10:38; Rom 15:19); is one with which he is himself equipped of God. Christ is thus in the highest sense that which Simon blasphemously suffered himself to be named, “The great Power of God” (Acts 8:10). But then, by an easy transition, the word comes to signify the exertions and separate puttings forth of this power. These are “powers” in the plural, although the same word is now translated in our Version, “wonderful works” (Mat 7:22), and now, “mighty works” (Mat 11:20; Mark 6:14; Luk 10:13), and still more frequently, “miracles” (Acts 2:22; Acts 19:11; 1Co 12:10; 1Co 12:28; Gal 3:5); in this last case giving sometimes such tautologies as this, “miracles and wonders” (Acts 2:22; Heb 2:4); and always causing to be lost something of the express force of the word,—namely, that it points to new powers which have entered, and are working in, this world of ours.
These three terms, of which we have hitherto sought to unfold the meaning, occur thrice in connexion with one another (Acts 2:22; 2Co 12:12; 2Th 2:9), although each time in a different order. They are all, as has already been noted in the case of two of them, rather descriptive of different sides of the same works, than themselves different classes of works.[12] An example of one of our Lord’s miracles may show how it may at once be all these. Thus the healing of the paralytic (Mark 2:1-12) was a wonder, for they who beheld it “were all amazed;” it was a power, for the man at Christ’s word “arose, took up his bed, and went out before them all;” it was a sign, for it gave token that One greater than men deemed was among them; it stood in connexion with a higher fact of which it was the sign and seal (cf. 1Ki 13:3; 2Ki 1:10), being wrought that they might “know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.”[13]
4. A further term by which St. John very frequently names the miracles is eminently significant. They are continually with him simply “works”[14] (John 5:36; John 7:21; John 10:25; John 10:32; John 10:38; John 14:11-12; John 15:24. cf. Mat 11:2); as though the wonderful were only the natural form of working for Him who is dwelt in by all the fulness of God; He must, out of the necessity of his higher being, bring forth these works greater than man’s. They are the periphery of that circle whereof He is the centre. The great miracle is the Incarnation; all else, so to speak, follows naturally and of course. It is no wonder that He whose name is “Wonderful” (Isa 9:6) does works of wonder; the only wonder would be if He did them not.[15] The sun in the heavens is itself a wonder; but it is not a wonder that, being what it is, it rays forth its effluences of light and heat. These miracles are the fruit after its kind which the divine tree brings forth; and may, with a deep truth, be styled the “works” [16] of Christ, with no further addition or explanation.
Footnotes
[1] Τέρας. The term θαῦμα, near akin to τέρας, and one of the commonest in the Greek Fathers to designate the miracles, never occurs in Scripture; θαυμᾴσιον only once (Mat 21:15); but the θαυμᾴζειν is often brought out as a consequence (Mat 8:27; Mat 9:8; Mat 9:33; Mat 15:31, &c). Παρᾴδοξον, which in like manner expresses the unexpectedness of the wonder, and so implies, though it does not express, the astonishment which it causes,—a word of frequent usage in ecclesiastical Greek,—is found only Luk 5:26.
[2] In Joh. tom. xiii. § 6.
[3] It is not satisfactory that a word, thus only the subordinate one in the Greek, should be the chief one in our language to designate these divine facts,—that the two words almost exclusively in use among us, namely wonders and miracles, should bring out only the accidental accompaniment, the astonishment which the work creates, and should go so little into the deeper meaning of the work itself. The Latin miraculum (not properly a substantive, but the neuter of miraculus) and the German Wunder lie under exactly the same defect.
[4] Σημεῖον. That defect, unfortunately so frequent in our English Version, namely, that it does not seek, so far as this is possible, to render one word of the original always by one and the same word in English, but varies its renderings capriciously and without necessity, is noticeable here. There is no reason why σημεῖον should not always have been rendered “sign;” but in the Gospel of St. John, with whom the word is an especial favourite far oftener than not, “sign” gives place to the vaguer “miracle,” and this sometimes not without injury to the force and entire clearness of the words: thus see John 3:2; John 7:31; John 10:41; and especially John 6:26, where the substitution of “miracles” for “signs” is particularly unfortunate. Our Version makes Christ to say to the multitude, which, after He had once fed them in the wilderness, gathered round Him again, “Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles,” &c. It should rather be, “Ye seek Me, not because ye saw signs’ (σημεῖα without the article), “not because ye recognized in those works of mine tokens and intimations of a higher presence, such as led you to conceive great thoughts of Me: they are no such glimpses of my higher nature which bring you here; but you come that you may again be filled.” The coming merely because they had seen miracles, in the sense of works that had made them marvel, and hoped to see such again, would have been as much condemned by our Lord as the coming only for the satisfying of their lowest earthly wants (Mat 12:30; Mat 16:1-4).
[5] Basil (in loc): Ἔστι σημεῖον πρᾶγμα φανερὸν, κεκρυμμένου τινὸς καὶ ἀφανοῦς ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν δήλωσιν ἔχον (Suicer, Thes. s. v.). And Lampe is good here (Comm. in Joh. vol. i. p. 513): Designat sane σημεῖον naturâ suâ rem non tantum extraordinariam, sensusque percellentem, sed etiam talem, qua? in rei alterius, absentis licet et futura? significationem atque adumbrationem adhibetur, unde et prognostica (Mat 16:3) et typi (Mat 12:39; Luk 11:29), nec non sacramenta, quale est illud circumcisionis (Rom 4:11), eodem nomine in N. T. exprimi solent. Aptissime ergo haec vox de miraculis usurpatur, ut indicet, quod non tan turn admirabili modo fuerint perpetrata, sed etiam sapientissimo consilio Dei ita directa atque ordinata, ut fuerint simul characteres Messise, ex quibus cognoscendus erat, sigilla doctrinae quam proferebat, et beneficiorumgratiae per Messiam jam praestandae, nec non typi viarum Dei, earumque circumstantiarum per quas talia beneficia erant applicanda.)
[6] The Latin monstrum, whether we derive it with Cicero (DeDivin. 1:42) from monstro, or with Festus from moneo (monstrum, velut monestrum, quod monet futurum), though commonly used as answering most nearly to τέρας (Nec dubiis ea signa dedit Tritonia monstris, AEn. 2:171), is in truth by either etymology more nearly related to σημεῖον. Thus Augustine, who follows Cicero’s derivation (De Civ. Dei, 21:8): Monstra sane dicta perhibent a monstrando, quod aliquid significando demonstrant, et ostenta ab ostendendo, et portenta a portendendo, id est prseostendendo, et prodigia quod porro dicant, id est futura praedicant. And In Ev. Joh. tract, xvi.: Prodigium appellatum est quasi porrodicium, quod porro dicat, porro significet, et aliquid futurum esse portendat. See Pauly’s Real Encyclopädie, vol. ii. p. 1139.
[7] As is natural, the word sometimes loses its special and higher signification, and is used simply as = τέρας. Thus St. Luke (xxiii. 8) says of Herod, that he hoped to have seen some “sign” (σημεῖον) wrought by Christ. The last thing he would have desired would have been a sign or indication of a present God; but what he wanted was some glaring feat which should have set him agape—a τέρας,—or, more properly yet, a Θαῦμα, in the lowest and meanest sense of the word.
[8] Cf. Virgil, AEN 8:42-45, 81-83.
[9] The words τέρας and σημεῖον stand linked together, not merely in the New T. (Acts 2:22; Acts 4:30; 2Co 12:12; John 4:48), but frequently in the Old (Exo 7:3; Exo 7:9; Exo 11:9; Deu 4:34; Deu 6:22, and often; Neh 9:10; Isa 8:18; Isa 20:3; Dan 4:2; Dan 6:27; Psa. 87:43; 54:27; 84:9, LXX); and no less in profane Greek (Polybius, 3:112, 8; AElian, V. H. 12:57; Orph. Argon, xxvii.; Josephus, Antiqq. 20:8, 6; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conv. iii.). The distinction between the two, as though the τέρας were the more wonderful, the σημεῖον the less so,—as though it would be a σημεῖον to heal the sick, a τέρας to open the blind eyes, or to raise the dead (so Ammonius, Cat. in John 4:48 : τέρας ἐστὶ τὸ παρὰ φύσιν, οἷον τὸ ἀνοῖξαι ὀφθαλμοὺς τυφλῶν καὶ ἐγεῖραι νεκρόν· σημεῖον δὲ τὸ οὐκ ἔξω τῆς φύσεως, οἷόν ἐστιν ἰάσασθαι ἄῤῥωστον, is quite untenable, however frequent among some of the Greek Fathers (see Suicer, Thes. s. v. σημεῖον). Neither will Origen’s distinction stand (in Rom 15:19): Signa appellantur, in quibus cum sit aliquid mirabile, indicatur quoque aliquid futurum. Prodigia vero in quibus tantummodo aliquid mirabile ostenditur. Rather the same miracle is upon one side a τέρας, on another a σημεῖον; and the words most often refer not to different classes of miracles, but to different qualities in the same miracles; so Fritzsche: Eandemrem diverse aestimatam exprimunt; and Lampe (Comm. in Joh. vol. i. p. 513): Eadem miracula dici possunt signa, quatenus aliquid seu occultum seu futurum docent; et prodigia (re. pa. Ta), quatenus aliquid extraordinarium, quod stuporem excitat, sistunt. Hinc sequitur signorum notionem latius patere, quam prodigiorum. Omnia prodigia sunt signa, quia in ilium usum a Deo dispensata, ut arcanum indicent. Sed omnia signa non anut prodigia, quia ad signandum res ccelestes aliquando etiam res communes adhibentur. Cf. 2Ch 32:24; 2Ch 32:31; where at ver. 24 that is called a σημεῖον, which at ver. 31 is a τέρας (LXX).
[10] Δυνάμεις = virtutes.
[11] With this ἐξουσία is related, which yet only once occurs to designate a miracle. They are termed ἔνδοξα Luk 13:17, as being works in which the δόξα of God came eminently out (see John 2:11), and which in return caused men to glorify Him (Mark 2:12). They are μεγαλεῖα = magnalia (Luk 1:49), as outcomings of the greatness of God’s power
[12] Pelt’s definition (Comm. in Thess, p. 179) is brief and good: Parum differunt tria ista δυνάμεις, σημεῖα, τέρατα. Δύναμις numero singulari tamen est vis miraculorum edendorum; σημεῖα quatenus comprobandae inserviunt doctrinae sive missioni divinae; τέρατα portenta sunt, quae admirationem et stuporem excitant. Cf. Calvin on 2Co 12:12 : Signa porro vocantur, quod non sunt inania spectacula, sed quae destinata sunt docendis hominibus. Prodigia, quod suâ, novitate expergefacere homines debent, et percellere. Potentiae aut virtutes, quod sunt magis insignia specimina divinae potentiae, quam quae cernimus in ordinario naturae cursu.
[13] With regard to the verbs connected with these nouns, we may observe in the three first Evangelists, σημεῖα διδόναι (Mat 12:39; Mat 24:24; Mark 8:12), and still more frequently δυνάμεις ποιεῖν (Mat 7:22; Mat 13:58; Mark 9:39, &c). Neither of these phrases occurs in St. John, but σημεῖα ποιεῖν continually (John 2:11; John 3:2; John 4:54; &c), which is altogether wanting in the earlier Evangelists; occurring, however, in the Acts (Acts 7:36; Acts 15:12) and in Revelations (Rev 13:13; Rev 19:20). Once St. John has σημεῖα δεικνύειν (John 2:18).
[14] The miracles of the O. T. are called ἔργα, Heb 3:9; Psa 94:9,
[15] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xvii.): Mirum non esse debet a Deo factum miraculum....Magis gaudere et admirari debemus quia Dominus noster et Salvator Jesus Christus homo factus est, quam quod divina inter homines Deus fecit.
[16] I am aware that this interpretation of ἔργα, as used by St. John, has sometimes been called in question, and that by this word has been understood the sum total of his acts and his teachings, his words and his works, as they came under the eyes of men; not indeed excluding the miracles, but including also very much besides; yet I cannot doubt that our Lord, using this word, means his miracles, and only them. The one passage brought with any apparent force against this meaning (John 17:4) does not really belong to the question. For that ἔργον in the singular may, and here does, signify his whole work and task, is beyond all doubt; but that in the plural the word means his miracles, the following passages, John 5:36; John 10:25; John 10:32; John 10:38; John 14:11, to which others might be added, seem to me decisively to prove.