Natural, Preternatural, and Supernatural Orders

A miracle is extraordinary only against the background of a real order. Catholic theology therefore distinguishes what belongs to ordinary created powers, what may exceed familiar human powers while remaining created, and what exceeds the created order as such.

This matters enormously when discussing rival religious miracle claims. “I cannot explain this naturally” is not yet equivalent to “God miraculously did this,” much less “God performed this in order to certify proposition P.”

Lambertini knows the stricter Thomistic definition:

a miracle simpliciter occurs beyond the order of the whole created nature.

But he also discusses a looser or relative category, miracle “with respect to us” (quoad nos), where an effect exceeds the visible or corporeal nature known to us even though some created spiritual power could in principle produce it. He explicitly distinguishes miracles exceeding the powers of all created nature from those exceeding corporeal/visible nature.

Therefore Lambertini's taxonomy is not merely:

natural / miraculous.

It is closer to:

ordinary natural effect → extraordinary created/preternatural effect → miracle relative to visible nature → miracle strictly exceeding the whole created causal order.

And the canonical question cannot be settled merely by noticing that something exceeds familiar human powers.

This is one reason Lambertini’s Chapter III becomes indispensable.

Lambertini is explicitly facing the rival-supernatural-claim problem.

He first follows Aquinas in denying that demons can perform strict miracles by their own power. They can, however, produce things exceeding ordinary human capacities and familiar corporeal causes. Such things can loosely or improperly appear miraculous.

This gives him at least three possibilities for a spectacular non-divine event:

illusion, real effect produced by superior created power, or natural causation skillfully manipulated beyond ordinary human knowledge.

He even discusses deception of the senses, rapid substitution, and the application of active to passive natural powers as ways an effect might appear supernatural while remaining within created causality.

This is premodern language, but the methodological principle is completely recognizable:

Do not infer divine causation merely from the observer's inability to explain an event.

Lambertini expressly acknowledges human epistemic limitations. Quoting Augustine, he says it is extremely difficult, indeed impossible without divine help, to know exhaustively what demons can do by nature and what they cannot do because providence restrains them.

That makes his position much less glib than “we know the complete causal inventory.”

Aquinas, ST I, q. 105, a. 7; q. 110, a. 4; Lambertini, De Servorum Dei IV.1, chs. I–III.