miracle
Authentication
In practice it is difficult to distinguish the revelatory or signifying miracles from miracles of authentication—i.e., miraculous happenings that serve: (1) as credentials for claimants to religious authority in the form of leadership (e.g., in Exodus, chapter 4, Moses convinces the Israelites of the authenticity of his mission by miraculous performances) or prophecy (e.g., in Deuteronomy, chapter 18, it is said that a prophet is disqualified if the sign that he has predicted does not come to pass); (2) as the demonstration of the superior power of a particular god (e.g., in Exodus, chapter 7, Aaron’s staff swallowed up the staffs of the Egyptian magicians, which showed the superiority of the God of the Israelites); (3) as proof of the sanctity of a holy man, a holy site, or a holy object; or (4) more generally as evidence of the truth of a particular religion.
Sources of miracles
Table Of Contents
Spiritual sources
The source of miracles is always a divine, spiritual, supernatural, sacred, or numinous power that may be conceived in personal form (e.g., God, gods, spirits) or impersonal form (e.g., mana or magic). The sacred may manifest itself in natural phenomena, such as thunderstorms or earthquakes, that evoke appropriate feelings of awe, but these are not usually considered miracles unless attended by special circumstances—e.g., being predicted by a “man of God” or coinciding with an event of religious significance. As reported in the Gospel According to Matthew, chapter 27, at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” The belief that thunder and lightning are manifestations of divine powers is very common, and many deities have been interpreted as personifying them or at least as being symbolized by them. Even in the Old Testament, thunderstorms and lightnings appear as manifestations or messengers of God. In this respect, the account of the theophany granted to the prophet Elijah in I Kings, chapter 19, marks a milestone in the history of religions, for “behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice” in which Elijah heard God.
In most cases theophanies and divine manifestations occur for a specific purpose: giving laws (e.g., Moses and the theophany at Mt. Sinai; events in the lives of Numa Pompilius of Rome, Minos of Crete, and Lycurgus of Sparta, the ancient lawgivers in classical legend); saving interventions (e.g., the voices resounding from the temple of Athena Pronaea in Delphi that caused the Persians to retreat); and the founding of cults (e.g., the appearances of Mary, the mother of Jesus, at Lourdes, France, and Fatima, Portugal). Gods would appear to their devotees in visions and dreams, but these experiences should, perhaps, not be treated under the same general heading with other miracles. Immediate divine action was often perceived in omens preceding important undertakings, in apparently natural phenomena occurring providentially at critical moments or in miraculous—i.e., sudden and seemingly impossible—cures. In most cases, however, such divine interventions took place through some form of mediation, human or inanimate.
Human and inanimate sources
Man can be the object of miracles, as when his disease is miraculously healed, or their subject, as when he performs miracles, such as healing others, in the name of whatever power is moving him. The two aspects cannot always be strictly distinguished, as is seen in the case of saints whose bodies are immune from corruption after death or founders of religions whose birth is attended by supernatural manifestations. Generally speaking, however, it is the role of holy personages—and of their tombs and relics—as sources of miracles that are of importance in the history of religions and more especially in the history of popular cults.
Founders of religions
The attitudes of the founders of the great religions toward miracles vary considerably, but all have become the subject of legends of the most fantastic kind in popular belief, and much of this legendary material has been subsequently canonized in scripture and tradition.
Holy persons
Much closer to the lives and devotion of ordinary folk than the superhuman figures of the founders are the saints, monks, ascetics, and diverse kinds of holy men and women. The attitude toward saints and their miracles is very much the same on the popular levels of all religions, although the theoretical interpretations on the more theological level vary considerably. In Far Eastern religions it is often difficult to distinguish between saints and hero gods, because great men of renowned virtue can be deified and venerated and even receive officially approved state cults. Miracles occur as a matter of course at their tombs and relics. In Muslim as well as in Christian belief, the occurrence of miracles is part of the requirements for official recognition of sainthood and is interpreted as a special intervention by God, who thereby manifests his esteem for the saint or, more essentially, his salvific presence as realized concretely in the life and virtues of the saint. In Indian—Hindu and Buddhist—belief, miraculous powers are the “natural” result of ascetic practice and spiritual realization and can thus be considered as an almost natural manifestation of magical or spiritual causes.
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