Chapter 5 3 min read
Signs, Wonders, and Powers in Scripture
From the minimally refined research manuscript
The biblical vocabulary already resists reducing miracle to brute anomaly. Scripture presents mighty deeds as acts of power, as occasions of wonder, and, crucially, as signs whose meaning belongs to a revelatory context.
The biblical category is richer than simply “miracle.” Scripture speaks of signs, wonders, and powers/mighty deeds: sēmeia, terata, dynameis. Those terms pick out different aspects of the same phenomenon.
A power concerns what is being done. A wonder concerns the astonishment it produces. A sign concerns what it signifies.
That distinction becomes enormously important. Something can be astonishing without thereby functioning as a divine endorsement of every proposition surrounding it.
The New Testament nevertheless clearly assigns some miracles a vindicatory function. Peter describes Jesus as one whom God “attested” through mighty deeds, wonders, and signs (Acts 2:22). Jesus appeals to his works as testimony to his mission (John 5:36; 10:37–38). Hebrews says God bore witness to the apostolic proclamation “by signs and wonders and various miracles” (Hebrews 2:3–4). Mark describes the Lord “confirming the word” through accompanying signs (Mark 16:20). John explicitly says his selected signs are written “that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” (John 20:30–31).
Vatican II therefore describes revelation itself as an inseparable unity of deeds and words: the deeds manifest and confirm what the words proclaim, while the words interpret the deeds. Christ consummates revelation through his entire person and history, including his “words and deeds, his signs and wonders,” climaxing in his death, resurrection, and gift of the Spirit.
Already this gives us an important formula:
Event + interpretive relation = sign.
An unexplained healing by itself is an event. A healing occurring in an intelligibly specified relationship to a divine claim may become a sign.
But Scripture immediately prevents the inference from becoming naive. Deuteronomy 13 explicitly imagines a sign occurring in connection with someone who then tells Israel to follow other gods; Israel is not to infer from the impressive event that the contradictory religious message is true. Jesus warns about false signs (Matthew 24:24), and Matthew 7:22–23 imagines people doing mighty works in his name who nevertheless do not belong to him morally. Most strikingly for the present problem, the disciples encounter someone outside their group casting out demons in Jesus' name, and Jesus tells them not to stop him (Mark 9:38–40; Luke 9:49–50).
So Scripture itself already knows that:
supernatural-looking power ≠ holiness ≠ complete doctrinal correctness ≠ ecclesial fullness.
Those are separable questions.
The tradition does not reduce them to proof.
There is first benefaction. Someone is healed, delivered, protected, fed, restored.
There is revelation. Something about God, Christ, the Kingdom, salvation, or creation's destiny becomes visible.
There is vindicatory confirmation. A message or messenger receives divine attestation.
There is hagiological testimony. A saint's holiness or intercessory communion with God may be attested.
There is ecclesial edification. The Church is strengthened in faith.
And there is an eschatological dimension. Christ's healings are not random party tricks; they anticipate the restoration of creation. The blind see, the lame walk, the dead rise. The miracle temporarily manifests what creation looks like under the victorious reign of God.
Irenaeus already presents Christian miracles this way around the late second century. He describes the Church throughout the world exercising gifts received from Christ, including exorcisms, healings, prophetic gifts, and even reports of raisings from the dead, and emphasizes that these are exercised for the benefit of human beings, freely rather than through magical commerce or incantation.
Augustine, centuries later, makes continuation explicit. In City of God XXII.8 he reports contemporary miracles connected with Christ's sacraments, the prayers of Christians, and the relics of martyrs. He simultaneously notes a major evidential problem: local contemporary reports do not enjoy the same universal publicity and documentary status as canonical apostolic signs. That is an unexpectedly sophisticated observation about testimonial accessibility.
Acts 2:22; John 5:36; John 10:37–38; John 20:30–31; Hebrews 2:3–4; Mark 16:20; Deuteronomy 13:2–4; Matthew 7:22–23; Matthew 24:24; Mark 9:38–40.
A closer look
Questions raised here.
Why does wonder belong to miracle, and why is astonishment by itself insufficient evidence of divine action?
The very word miraculum is associated with wonder: we encounter a manifest effect while its cause is hidden. But ordinary ignorance can also cause wonder. An eclipse may astonish someone ignorant of astronomy without being miraculous. Accordingly, wonder properly initiates causal inquiry rather than completing it. The movement is from encounter, to astonishment, to investigation, to possible recognition of divine agency, and only then to interpretation as sign. Astonishment is not revelation.
What is the difference between a miracle, a miraculous sign, and divine testimony?
This is one of the manuscript’s central distinctions. A miracle is miraculous by reason of its causal relation to the created order. It functions as a sign insofar as the event intelligibly manifests something beyond its bare occurrence. A miraculous sign becomes divine testimony only where the circumstances warrant interpreting it as divine confirmation or attestation. The same event can therefore be considered causally qua miracle, semiotically qua sign, and attestatively qua testimony. Not every miracle is vindicatory.