Hoops wrote:Chap wrote:I think it would help focus the discussion a little better if you could indicate at roughly what date you believe that miracles did effectively cease.
I am looking for an answer in the form "250 AD plus or minus 50 years" rather than in the form "once the church was firmly established".
(Let's drop the term 'cessationist', since we seem to want to use it in different ways, and it is likely to become a distraction.)
effectively cease? 350
Chap wrote:
Thanks for the clarification. I can't unfortunately continue this discussion at the moment, but may be able to come back later.
OK. So your have chosen AD 350, close to the time of the
Council of Laodicea, which amongst other things defined a biblical canon. After that, no more miracles in the style of the earlier Church, because (if I understand you correctly) they were no longer needed to help establish the church.
That does leave the problem, which I think we do agree is a real problem. that nobody seems to have noticed that there weren't any miracles like there used to be. Sober and reasonable Christian writers go on writing as if nothing had changed, and that holiness would normally bring miracles with it.
Take, for instance, the first English historian, the monk
Bede of Jarrow (672/673 – 26 May 735). He was a deeply learned man, who wrote the first history of the English,
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People). A text of that is
online here. Bede read Latin and Greek as well as his native Anglo-Saxon, and used many sources to put his work together; he cites a number of original documents of great importance, including this letter from Pope Gregory to Augustine of Canterbury, who had been sent over to convert the heathen English. Here is Bede's citation of the letter, dated AD 601:
CHAP. XXXI. How Pope Gregory, by letter, exhorted Augustine not to glory in his miracles. [601 A.D.]
At which time he also sent Augustine a letter concerning the miracles that he had heard had been wrought by him; wherein he admonishes him not to incur the danger of being puffed up by the number of them. The letter was in these words:
"I know, dearly beloved brother, that Almighty God, by means of you, shows forth great miracles to the nation which it was His will to choose. Wherefore you must needs rejoice with fear, and fear with joy concerning that heavenly gift; for you will rejoice because the souls of the English are by outward miracles drawn to inward grace; but you will fear, lest, amidst the wonders that are wrought, the weak mind may be puffed up with self-esteem, and that whereby it is outwardly raised to honour cause it inwardly to fall through vain-glory. For we must call to mind, that when the disciples returned with joy from preaching, and said to their Heavenly Master, ‘Lord, even the devils are subject to us through Thy Name;’ forthwith they received the reply, ‘In this rejoice not; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.’ For their minds were set on private and temporal joys, when they rejoiced in miracles; but they are recalled from the private to the common joy, and from the temporal to the eternal, when it is said to them, ‘Rejoice in this, because your names are written in heaven.’ For all the elect do not work miracles, and yet the names of all are written in heaven. For those who are disciples of the truth ought not to rejoice, save for that good thing which all men enjoy as well as they, and in which their joy shall be without end.
"It remains, therefore, most dear brother, that amidst those outward actions, which you perform through the power of the Lord, you should always carefully judge yourself in your heart, and carefully understand both what you are yourself, and how much grace is bestowed upon that same nation, for the conversion of which you have received even the gift of working miracles. And if you remember that you have at any time sinned against our Creator, either by word or deed, always call it to mind, to the end that the remembrance of your guilt may crush the vanity which rises in your heart. And whatsoever gift of working miracles you either shall receive, or have received, consider the same, not as conferred on you, but on those for whose salvation it has been given you."
Gregory is not trying to convince anyone that Augustine works miracles - he is warning him not to be too proud of the miracles he works. This is obviously a world that thinks that miracles in themselves are only to be expected. There is no sign that they are thought to have ceased centuries before.
Similarly,
Bede's Life of Saint Cuthbert (634-687) records a large number of miracles, which he tells us he has checked with witnesses. Bede clearly thinks he is giving us a sober account of well-attested truth, showing just what one would expect of a great saint like Cuthbert.
My point here is not that one ought to believe in miracles because Bede records them. It is, rather, that in evidential terms there is just as good a case for believing in miracles around the 7th century AD as there was in the first century AD, and perhaps better.
Or, one might say that if one disbelieves the 7th century miracles, one has an even better reason to disbelieve in the 1st century ones.
Hoops, as I understand it, only feels able to privilege the latter over the former because she thinks there was a special reason for miracles pre AD 350, and that after that date they did not happen any more, because they were no longer necessary. The evidence of Bede - and of those who preceded and followed him - seems to count quite heavily against that.
