Miracles and Monks

Regarding the spiritual gifts I am a moderate cessationist: they have mostly ceased since the apostolic times, but frequently recur in situations similar to that of the apostles--to wit, in places of the world new to the gospel. There, demons still hold some sway and the coming of the Son of Man to overthrow them is properly announced with signs and wonders, just as in first-century Jerusalem.

Living as we do in a post-Christian, not a pre-Christian era (an era entirely novel in the history of the world, finding its only parallel in the long history of Israel), small wonder we stumble at the miraculous accounts of early church historians. Things don't happen that way in our age because they don't need to--the demons have been toppled, and it is only sinful men that need to be dealt with rather than hostile spiritual powers.

Galatians makes it clear that Israel's period of bondage to the law was a period of subjection while preparing to assume her inheritance in Christ, and the Bible mentions that the law was delivered to Moses by angels. When Christ came to redeem humanity, He finally fulfilled the dominion mandate that was originally given to mankind, to subdue the earth and rule over it. Ever since then His people, as their redemption deepens, have been increasing their rule over creation as instruments of Christ--the very thing for which creation has longed and groaned.

So when the dauntless monks first carried the gospel into northern Europe, they were the trumpeters announcing to the temporary rulers of creation that the King had come and was booting them from office without a pension plan. No wonder they met with cranky demons; no wonder they had to back up their claims with demonstrations of the new power over creation that had been given the Man, and through the Man to the men.

This has a particular application to miracles that demonstrate a power over nature, such as Christ calming the wind and the waves. For one thing, it implies that there are not merely impersonal "forces of nature", but that each part of nature is delivered into the care of a being. Thus, when St Brendan saw spiritual powers at work in objects that we nowadays recognise as ordinary parts of nature, he was not necessarily being superstitious. In his day, the whales might really have been wicked monsters bent on their destruction, because the spiritual powers that governed the whales were hostile to the Christ-led human takeover of creation.

Today, there are still personal beings in charge of creation, but they are us, not demons, and we are putting our powers to helpful purposes (with many missteps along the way) rather than the random and fantastic displays of the demons. They may have controlled the power of water to smash boats and create freak whirlpools, but we enchain the waters to produce electricity. They may have driven a herd of hogs violently into the sea, but we get bacon. And creation could not be happier: her groanings and longings are being fulfilled. After 4000 years of futility, she at last found her true master for whom she was created.

Our modern skepticism is intended as a denial of Christ's authority. But more deeply, and quite unconsciously, we bear witness to how wide a chasm there is between us who live in a land where Christ has ruled for millennia, and the first missionaries who came to a land where Christ's banner had not yet been planted. Fear is the result of unbelief in a pre-Christian society; skepticism is only possible in a post-Christian society. In the intervening time--the Christian period--the very nature of the world must have been fundamentally altered.