Augustine: from Reasoned Skeptic to Reluctant MIRACLE-worker
[The earliest portrait of Saint Augustine in a 6th century fresco, Lateran, Rome—Public domain, Wikimedia]
WHEN AUGUSTINE CONVERTED to Christianity in 386 he was skeptical of contemporary miracles, believing they were no longer needed. He was still skeptical ten years later when he became bishop of Hippo, but time would modify his views.
The creation of the universe, he reasoned, was the great miracle. What we call “miracles” were not contrary to nature but revealed the hidden potential of nature. However, people are so accustomed to seeing natural events, they do not recognize the miraculous in everyday happenings.
The creation of the universe, he reasoned, was the great miracle. What we call “miracles” were not contrary to nature but revealed the hidden potential of nature. However, people are so accustomed to seeing natural events, they do not recognize the miraculous in everyday happenings.
Nature indeed is full of marvelous miracles, but all these marvelous things have grown cheap by their regular frequency. Thus, let one man who already existed among men rise from the dead, it’s a divine work acclaimed by everyone; so many who didn’t exist are born every day, and nobody marvels at it. Christ turned water into wine, a great miracle! Who else does the same thing every year in the vine? You don’t think it’s particularly wonderful that moisture is drawn from the earth, converted into the quality of that kind of wood, passes through the branches, opens out the leaves, also produces the swelling clusters of grapes, makes them grow while they are unripe, gives them color when they ripen?
He concluded that God being the same today as he was yesterday and people having the same doubts now as in the past, God can, and may, choose to work miracles if he sees fit. Their purpose is to instruct us and help us believe. Miracles are usually in answer to the intercession of Christians. Augustine also considered conversion to Christianity one of the greatest miracles. His own story shows exceptional elements.
Such reasoning led him to change his opinion of relics. Originally skeptical of such tokens, he gradually modified his view of “dust.” Partly his change of mind was forced by his efforts to win the Donatists. These North African Christians had broken affiliation with imperial Christianity. Impressed by saints’ relics, they venerated those of their own martyrs. As part of his policy, Augustine built a shrine to the supposed relics of St. Stephen. Because Stephen was the first Christian martyr (Acts 7), these relics were more impressive than any the Donatists had and he hoped would attract them to his church. Augustine kept records of the miracles wrought by Stephen’s relics.
Surprisingly, Augustine was also involved in a healing miracle. Possidius, his first biographer, wrote an interesting account of a miraculous event that happened shortly before Augustine’s death:
When he was sick and confined to his bed there came a certain man with a sick relative and asked him to lay his hand upon him that he might be healed. But Augustine answered that if he had any power in such things he would surely have applied it to himself first of all; to which the stranger replied that he had had a vision and that in his dream these words had been addressed to him: "Go to the bishop Augustine that he may lay his hand upon him, and he shall be whole." Now when Augustine heard this he did not delay to do it and immediately God caused the sick man to depart from him healed.
On this day, 28 August 430, Augustine died. He is remembered mostly for his autobiography, his response to the sack of Rome (City of God), and his Manichean-influenced theology of predestination; but in contemplating those great works, we should not forget that he also left a small body of thoughts on divine interventions.
—Dan Graves
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Vision Video and RedeemTV offer several videos about Augustine, including Augustine: For All Generations.
See also CH #67 Augustine: Sinner, Bishop, Saint
