Chapter 6 2 min read
What a Miracle Is
From the minimally refined research manuscript
Aquinas offers the classical metaphysical grammar. Miracle is not defined by human surprise alone, still less by the present limits of scientific explanation. It concerns the relation of an effect to the created order of causes.
Aquinas supplies perhaps the clearest metaphysical account.
In Book IV, Part I, Lambertini begins with a distinction more sophisticated than the modern slogan “violation of a law of nature.”
Lambertini begins with a twofold divinely instituted order: the natural order and the supernatural order pertaining to grace and glory. He makes an important move immediately. The Incarnation, virgin birth, Resurrection of Christ, mission of the Holy Spirit, sacramental operation, and glorification of bodies are supernatural relative to nature, but they are not the class of miracles he is presently investigating. They belong to another divine order already disclosed through faith. Even justification, ordinarily belonging to the supernatural order, can take on a specifically miraculous character when it occurs in an extraordinary manner, as in Paul's conversion.
That is an important correction to overly broad definitions:
Not everything supernatural is a miracle in the canonical-apologetic sense.
This is particularly useful for the later distinction between sacramental efficacy and miraculous manifestation. Lambertini already has conceptual space to say that sacramental supernatural reality and extraordinary miraculous manifestation are not identical categories.
He then adopts Aquinas's analysis of wonder. For admiration to arise, the effect must be manifest while its cause is hidden. Yet a hidden divine cause is not enough by itself: the ordinary creation of the rational soul is from God, but Lambertini says it is not called miraculous because the order according to which God acts is known. By contrast, Christ's instantaneous healing of Peter's mother-in-law occurs through a special providence outside that familiar order.
divine causation ≠ miracle.
Everything depends upon divine causality at some level. Miracle concerns a distinctive relation between an effect and the ordinarily established secondary causal order.
And Lambertini is careful about the word unusual. Following Thomas, he says insolitum does not simply mean statistically rare. The point is an excess beyond the mode naturally belonging to the relevant power. Something could theoretically happen frequently and still be miraculous if it occurred beyond the natural mode.
That distinction is philosophically excellent:
rarity is statistical; miraculousness is causal.
Lambertini’s clarification
Lambertini preserves the Thomistic core while distinguishing a strict miracle, which exceeds the powers of the whole created order, from looser uses of the term for effects exceeding visible corporeal powers. His distinction prevents an investigator from confusing the unfamiliar with the uncreated.
In his own words: “At nos majoris claritatis gratia dicimus, Miracula majora excedere vires totius naturae creatae, & Miracula minora excedere vires naturae tantum corporeae, & visibilis.” Working translation: “For the sake of greater clarity, we say that greater miracles exceed the powers of the whole of created nature, while lesser miracles exceed only the powers of corporeal and visible nature.”
Aquinas, ST I, q. 105, aa. 6–8; Lambertini, De Servorum Dei IV.1, chs. I–II, esp. p. 14 of the 1738 edition.
A closer look
Questions raised here.
What is a miracle, properly speaking?
A miracle is not simply an unusual event or something for which we presently lack a scientific explanation. In the manuscript’s classical Catholic account, a miracle properly so called is an extraordinary divine effect whose production lies beyond the proportionate causal powers of the created order. God alone is therefore the principal cause of miracle in the strict sense, although creatures may be instruments, occasions, or objects within a miraculous event. Miraculousness is fundamentally a causal-metaphysical category, not a statistical one.
Does an event become miraculous because it is rare or scientifically inexplicable?
No. Rarity concerns frequency; miracle concerns causality. A natural event could be extraordinarily rare and remain natural, while an effect repeatedly produced beyond proportionate created powers would remain miraculous. Likewise, scientific inexplicability establishes at most that presently available natural explanations are inadequate. The manuscript repeatedly insists upon the sequence unexpected ≠ inexplicable ≠ miraculous.