What are Miracles?
| To convey the notion that the terms supernatural and natural are one and the same thing, the difference being only their location on the continuum of God’s creation, is like embarking on mission impossible. But then no progress would be possible in any human endeavor without such embarkation.
To understand the relationship between natural and supernatural first consider the definitions of each word (and derivatives) – Ref. Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary. Natural: - existing in or caused by nature; not artificial - having a physical existence as opposed to what is spiritual - not exceptional or miraculous - not surprising; to be expected Supernatural: - attributed to or thought to reveal some force above the laws of nature - magical; mystical Miracle: - an extraordinary event attributed to some supernatural agency Almost everybody, believers and atheists alike, would subscribe to these definitions. We see the natural and supernatural states differ only by the presence or absence of God. If God is not involved in a given state or event, then it is deemed natural; if He is involved then it is supernatural. This then raises the obvious question: what aspect of creation does not involve God? Where within nature is God not present? The answer is obvious: God is present everywhere and no part of creation exists without Him. For in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and unto him. [Col 1:16] All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made. [John 1:3] Consequently if everything in creation is to be attributed to God, then by definition, everything is a miracle, and everything is supernatural. This also means that everything natural is supernatural (because everything natural involves God), and conversely everything supernatural is natural. What we are really talking about is perception. To the normal person in the street, God’s presence is not obvious, certainly in day to day life. What he sees and experiences in everyday life is normal and is termed natural: according to the dictionary definition, it is not exceptional; it is not surprising; but rather it is to be expected. When the opposite happens, where it seems God has intervened (out of the blue), then the ‘normal’ person views this as supernatural involvement, and calls it miraculous. To a saint on the other hand, God’s active involvement is a daily occurrence; to him this is natural. Yet in both cases God is actively involved – always. Consequently, it is not God’s involvement that transforms something from natural to supernatural; rather it is His unexpected involvement in the eyes of the observer. This means that supernatural is merely a term that describes our attitude to God. It may aid our understanding if we consider the concept of nous – a term used by the Fathers that refers to the non-rational intellect. Nous Ref: Light from the East Alexei V. Nesteruk Fortress Press (pp 52-53) Maximus the Confessor comments thus: “Created beings are termed intelligible [that is, they can be grasped by the reason (dianoia)] because each of them has an origin that can be known rationally [that is, discursively]. But God cannot be termed intelligible, while from our apprehension of intelligible beings we can do no more than believe that He exists.” Maximus agrees with Isaac that rational thinking (that is, dianoia) cannot be used in theologia, in the immediate vision and experience of God. The glossary of The Philokalia explains this point by qualifying knowledge based on the dianoia as the knowledge of a lower order than spiritual knowledge: It does not imply any direct apprehension or perception of the inner essences or principles of created beings, still less of divine truth itself. The apprehension in the latter sense is made possible only by nous and is beyond the scope of reason. This distinction can help us understand the apophaticism of Patristic theology from the anthropological and psychological points of view. Apophaticism can be understood as the inability of the reason (dianoia) to have any direct apprehension of God; at the same time, apophaticism means that any rational discursive definitions of God as truth are inadequate - that is, the rational concept of truth is not possible. The dianoia as a passive organ, or faculty, of the whole human cannot participate in things that are inquired into; it cannot, as taken in itself, provide communion with truth. In contradistinction to dianoia the nous works by direct apprehension. Its subject matter is not simply outside itself. It does not reason from premises to conclusions by strict logical steps; rather, it apprehends the truth through a kind of inner vision. Nous, according to The Philokalia's definition, is the “highest faculty in man, through which - provided it is purified - he knows God or the inner essences or principles of created things by means of direct apprehension or spiritual perception.” According to St. Maximus: “The intellect [nous] is the organ of wisdom, the intelligence that of spiritual knowledge.” The Fathers made a clear distinction between knowledge in the ordinary sense, as the knowledge of things, and spiritual knowledge, which by its function transcends the natural realm and aims to apprehend intelligible realities and the realm of the Divine: It possesses the capacity for a union that transcends its nature and that unites it with what is beyond its natural scope. It is through this union that divine realities are apprehended, not by means of our own natural capacities, but by virtue of the fact that we entirely transcend ourselves and belong entirely to God. In a sense, the nous is the gateway to God. A person’s spiritual growth, his increase in holiness, reflects a corresponding increase in the purity of his nous. For purposes of discussion we can view this growth in purity as being an exponential process, ranging from the base level of the typical Orthodox believer to saints of varying degrees of holiness through to God. We can plot this as a graph of spiritual status. The origin 0:0 represents the state of the average fallen man. The Y axis represents purity of nous (or state of Godliness, if you like), and the horizontal X axis shows the location of an individual person in relation to the fallen condition, meaning that an increase in X represents departure from the fallen state (or coming closer to God). To help visualize this, we can use some hypothetical units. Say Y is measured in units of Grace, and X is a measure of time spent in prayer. Comparison between three people: A, B and C Person A prays 1 hour per day and receives 1 unit of grace Person B prays 2 hours per day and receives 4 units of grace Person C prays 10 hours per day and receives 100 units of grace The amount of grace received is a measure of saintliness; and the greater the saintliness the greater the response from, and interaction with, God. From the perspective of the typical sinner at 0:0 (Person S), Person C is a miracle worker – he heals the sick and walks on water. To Person S such behaviour is not normal; therefore it contravenes the laws of nature. But to Person C, what he is doing is entirely normal and natural. It is natural because any other person located at position 10 on the X axis would produce the same results. So the issue is that nature is not one state of being and the supernatural state another; instead the entire area under the graph is natural; the more grace we acquire the more nature responds. Christ pointed this out when He said that we should be able to tell a mountain to move and it will obey. This is what nature is programmed to do, consequently the mountain moving is not an abnormality in nature; nature would naturally respond this way to people of the right spiritual calibre. It should be remembered that originally all of creation was meant to be Adam’s kingdom, and if that kingdom was to reflect Heaven, then obedience (to Adam) was paramount (because love cannot exist without obedience). Thus the laws of nature contain within themselves the capacity to respond to man’s commands. The fact that this doesn’t happen now does not mean that nature had been restructured or deconstructed (this would be synonymous with a new creation); rather the problem is that man’s spiritual state had tumbled. However, Christ tells us that we do still have that capability (if we choose to travel along the X axis). By saying that Christ performed His miracles using preexisting natural laws we are not saying that God is thereby restricted in His actions by/to the laws of nature. Instead we recognise that God had finished His work in the six days (phases) of creation and interacts with humanity within the system He created. To claim otherwise is to say that every time God performs a ‘miracle’ He creates something new that was not part of the original creation, in which case either Genesis is wrong or God made a mistake the first time – He created something that was not good (perfect), and had to build it again. |
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