Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? A Historical Argument

An excerpt from Four Views on Miraculous Gifts

The following is a lengthy excerpt from Robert L. Saucy’s chapter “An Open But Cautious View” in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views. Although Saucy is not defending the Cessationist perspective (Richard B. Gaffin Jr.), his chapter leans fairly strongly in that direction, particularly when he addresses the issue of church history.

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The conclusion that the era of Christ and the early apostolic church was a particular time of of miracles that did not continue at the same level in the later church is strongly confirmed by the witness of church history. The use of such historical evidence is sometimes challenged on the basis that it is an argument from experience and not Scripture…[Yet] we find that experience with regard to miracles has been used by proponents on both sides of the debate over the issue of miraculous gifts. Those who argue for their continued presence in church refer to the experience of miracles in church history as proof. Similarly, those who deny the continuation of the miraculous activity of Christ and the apostles today use the same history to support their understanding. The fact that historical evidence has been used for both positions points to the difficulty of its interpretation. Even as today, so in the past it is difficult to distinguish a genuine divine miracle from a spurious or even demonic one. This, however, does not make the historical record of no value. While the evaluations of many reported miracles may differ, it seems impossible to deny that miraculous activity of the quality and extent associated with the era of Christ and the apostles is not found as a continuing phenomenon in the later church.

A brief survey of the evidence demonstrates this. The writings immediately following the apostolic age contain little evidence of the miraculous when compared with the picture of the apostles and others in the biblical record. With few exceptions, the references to miraculous activity in the writings of the second and third centuries are confined to the gifts of prophecy and healing, which included exorcism.¹ Without denying any valid expressions of these miraculous gifts during this time, these two are the most difficult to evaluate. The association of healing with the effects of exorcism also makes it difficult to determine the extend of the miraculous healing of genuine organic diseases.

Furthermore, healings during this period appear to have occurred primarily through prayer, presumably following the instructions of James 5:14-16. How healing in such instances is related to “miraculous spiritual gifts” is not clear. In addition, according to Amundsen and Ferngren, the healing reports of the second and third centuries “were usually somewhat vague…The majority of writers did not claim to have seen the events related; [and] those through whom the healings or exorcisms were accomplished were not usually named.”

Beyond the limitedness and the character of the reports of miracles from this early period, we also find evidence of “the growing suspicion that miracles are dying out,” and that the miracles of this time were “different in kind from those of the apostolic age.” Origen, for example, writes, “Miracles began with the preaching of Jesus, were multiplied after His ascension, and then decreased; but even now some traces of them remain with a few, whose souls are cleansed by the word.”

…Although the church fathers of the second and third centuries did not say it directly, there is considerable evidence in their writings for the opinion later explicitly taught by Chrysostom and others that the age of miracles was essentially over. The purpose of the miraculous activity of Christ and the apostles had been for the inauguration of the gospel and the church and was not intended for all subsequent time. Origen and especially the later writers began to refer more to conversions and the transformation of lives by the gospel as evidence of continuing miracles in their times.

Reports of miracles became noticeable different from the fourth century on, both in number and sensationalism. In these later accounts “a wide variety of people, both alive and dead, are credited with miracles that in many instances must be labeled bizarre even by the most sympathetic reader.” A brief sketch of the first ten of a much longer list of miracles recorded by Augustine in his City of God provides an example of what was deemed miraculous at the time:

In the first, a blind man was cured by saint’s relics. In the second, painful surgical intervention was made unnecessary by fervent prayer. In the third, a woman was cured of breast cancer by following advice received in a dream to have a newly baptized woman make the sign of the cross on the affected breast. In the fourth, a physician was healed of gout by baptism. In the fifth, a man suffering from paralysis and hernia was healed by the same sacrament. The sixth instance recorded that demons, who were causing sickness among both cattle and slaves on a farm, were driven out by a priest who celebrated the Eucharist there and offered prayers. In the seventh, a paralytic was healed at a shrine built over a deposit of “holy soil” brought from the vicinity of Christ’s tomb. The eighth involved two miracles: a demon was driven from a youth at a shrine, and the injury done to the youth’s eye by the departing demon was miraculously healed. In the ninth, a young female demoniac was freed from possession when she anointed herself with some oil into which had fallen the tears of a priest who was praying for her. In the tenth, a demon was driven out of a young man by the assertion that “even today miracles are being wrought in the name of Christ, sometimes through His sacraments and sometimes through the intercession of the relics of His saints.”

Although Augustine is frequently mentioned as affirming the continuation of miracles in the church, it is safe to say that none today would acknowledge all of these reports as genuine biblical miracles. The greatness of many of the church leaders of this period and throughout the Middle Ages cannot be denied. But many non-biblical elements that affected their understanding and practice of the miraculous had been accepted into Christianity by this time, including “the veneration of saints and martyrs, the traffic in relics, Christian magic, an excessive preoccupation with demonism, and miracle-mongering.”

The evidence by which many miracles were substantiated also raises doubts about their validity. In marked contrast to someone like the apostle Paul, who claimed to work miracles, none of the writers reporting these later miracles ever claimed to have miraculous power themselves. Since by this time the saintliness of a person was measured to some extent by the amount of miraculous power he had, we frequently find miracles attributed to saints by their biographers. Interestingly, the farther a biographer was removed in time rom the saint of whom he wrote, the more the life of the saint was glorified with miracles.

The limited reports of miracles during the first two centuries immediately following the New Testament and the questionableness of many of the reported miracles especially from the fourth century on make it impossible to say that the level of miraculous activity seen in the era of Jesus and the apostolic church continued as the norm of church history. The church not only recognized a change regarding miracles, but, as already noted, this change was explained by seeing the miracles of the New Testament era as intended to attest to the first proclamation of the gospel and thus not to continue throughout all history.

What happened with regard to miracles in the history of the church is also true about prophecy. Though there have been general and widespread reports of prophecy in the church throughout history, Robeck’s assessment that the gift of prophecy as seen in Scripture lost some of its “spontaneity as time progressed” is generally accepted. Moreover, the manifestations of prophecy that did occur were primarily “among a variety of sects and cults.” Various reasons have been proposed for this decrease in prophecy, including its suppression by the church.² But it is difficult to see how the church through ecclesiastical authority or any other means could actually cause the cessation of prophecy. No religious authority could stop God from sending true prophets to his people in the Old Testament and at the inauguration of the Christian era. And such prophets were eventually recognized by his people.

The cumulative evidence we have examined—the limitation of the apostolic gift to the first generation, the clusters of miracles in the biblical record, and the evidence of church history—points unmistakably to the fact that there were special times of miraculous activities in which the miracles functioned primarily as signs. Since the time of Christ and the apostles was such a time of extraordinary miracles, the same level of activity cannot be seen as the norm of all church history.

- Robert L. Saucy, Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? pgs. 112-17

1. J.H. Bernard, “The Miraculous in Early Christian Literature,” in The Literature of the Second Century, ed. F.R. Wynne, J.H. Bernard, and S. Hempill (New York: James Pott & Co., 1891), 147. Ireneaus, for example, refers to prophecy and healing as present in his time, but resurrections from the dead are placed in the past tense (163-64).

2. Some have associated the decrease of prophecy with the development of the canon of Scripture. Others attribute it to the disrepute brought upon prophecy by its association with such sects as the Montanists, or to the taking over of the gifts of prophecy by the organized church, which led ultimately to the doctrine of papal infallibility.