From: Robert Schneider (rjschn39@bellsouth.net)
Date: Wed May 14 2003 - 09:07:36 EDT
Ted, here are the first four chapters of book XXVI of Augustine's _Contra
Faustum Manichaeum_. In the first two chapters Faustus is conceding that
Jesus might have died but, but good Docetist that he is, argues that Jesus
did not. Augustine answers in three and four.
Book XXVI.
Faustus insists that Jesus might have died though not born, by the
exercise of divine power, yet he rejects birth and death alike. Augustin
maintains that there are some things that even god cannot do, one of which
is to die. He refutes the docetism of the Manichaeans.
1. Faustus said: You ask, If Jesus was not born, how did He die? Well this
is a probability, such as one makes use of in want of proofs. We will,
however, answer the question by examples taken from what you generally
believe. If they are true, they will prove our case; if they are false, they
will help you no more than they will us. You say then, How could Jesus die,
if He were not man? In return, I ask you, How did Elias not die, though he
was a man? Could a mortal encroach upon the limits of immortality, and could
not Christ add to His immortality whatever experience of death was required?
If Elias, contrary to nature, lives for ever, why not allow that Jesus, with
no greater contrariety to nature, could remain in death for three days?
Besides that, it is not only Elias, but Moses and Enoch you believe to be
immortal, and to have been taken up with their bodies to heaven.
Accordingly, if it is a good argument that Jesus was a man because He died,
it is an equally good argument that Elias was not a man because he did not
die. But as it is false that Elias was not a man, notwithstanding his
supposed immortality, so it is false that Jesus was a man, though He is
considered to have died. The truth is, if you will believe it, that the
Hebrews were in a mistake regarding both the death of Jesus and the
immortality of Elias. For it is equally untrue that Jesus died and that
Elias did not die. But you believe whatever you please; and for the rest,
you appeal to nature. And, allowing this appeal, nature is against both the
death of the immortal and the immortality of the mortal. And if we refer to
the power of effecting their purpose as possessed by God and by man, it
seems more possible for Jesus to die than for Elias not to die; for the
power of Jesus is greater than that of Elias. But if you exalt the weaker to
heaven, though nature is against it, and, forgetting his condition as a
mortal, endow him with eternal felicity, why should I not admit that Jesus
could die if He pleased, even though I were to grant His death to have been
real, and not a mere semblance? For, as from the outset of His taking the
likeness of man He underwent in appearance all the experiences of humanity,
it was quite consistent that He should complete the system by appearing to
die.
2. Moreover, it is to be remembered that this reference to what nature
grants as possible, should be made in connection with all the history of
Jesus, and not only with His death. According to nature, it is impossible
that a man blind from his birth should see the light; and yet Jesus appears
to have performed a miracle of this kind, so that the Jews themselves
exclaimed that from the beginning of the world it was not seen that one
opened the eyes of a man born blind.1 So also healing a withered hand,
giving the power of utterance and expression to those born dumb, restoring
animation to the dead, with the recovery of their bodily frame after
dissolution had begun, produce a feeling of amazement, and must seem utterly
incredible in view of what is naturally possible and impossible. And yet, as
Christians, we believe all the things to have been done by the same person;
for we regard not the law of nature, but the powerful operation of God.
There is a story, too, of Jesus having been cast from the brow of a hill,
and having escaped unhurt. If, then, when thrown down from a height He did
not die, simply because He chose not to die, why should He not have had the
power to die when He pleased? We take this way of answering you because you
have a fancy for discussion, and affect to use logical weapons not properly
belonging to you. As regards our own belief, it is no more true that Jesus
died than that Elias is immortal.
3. Augustin replied: As to Enoch and Elias and Moses, our belief is
determined not by Faustus' suppositions, but by the declarations of
Scripture, resting as they do on foundations of the strongest and surest
evidence. People in error, as you are, are unfit to decide what is natural,
and what contrary to nature. We admit that what is contrary to the ordinary
course of human experience is commonly spoken of as contrary to nature. Thus
the apostle uses the words, "If thou art cut out of the wild olive, and
engrafted contrary to nature in the good olive."2 Contrary to nature is here
used in the sense of contrary to human experience of the course of nature;
as that a wild olive engrafted in a good olive should bring forth the
fatness of the olive instead of wild berries. But God, the Author and
Creator of all natures, does nothing contrary to nature; for whatever is
done by Him who appoints all natural order and measure and proportion must
be natural in every case. And man himself acts contrary to nature only when
he sins; and then by punishment he is brought back to nature again. The
natural order of justice requires either that sin should not be committed or
that it should not go unpunished. In either case, the natural order is
preserved, if not by the soul, at least by God. For sin pains the
conscience, and brings grief on the mind of the sinner, by the loss of the
light of justice, even should no physical sufferings follow, which are
inflicted for correction, or are reserved for the incorrigible. There is,
however, no impropriety in saying that God does a thing contrary to nature,
when it is contrary to what we know of nature. For we give the name nature
to the usual common course of nature; and whatever God does contrary to
this, we call a prodigy, or a miracle. But against the supreme law of
nature, which is beyond the knowledge both of the ungodly and of weak
believers, God never acts, any more than He acts against Himself. As regards
spiritual and rational beings, to which class the human soul belongs, the
more they partake of this unchangeable law and light, the more clearly they
see what is possible, and what impossible; and again, the greater their
distance from it, the less their perception of the future, and the more
frequent their surprise at strange occurrences.
4. Thus of what happened to Elias we are ignorant; but still we believe the
truthful declarations of Scripture regarding him. Of one thing we are
certain, that what God willed happened, and that except by God's will
nothing can happen to any one. So, if I am told that it is possible that the
flesh of a certain man shall be changed into a celestial body, I allow the
possibility, but I cannot tell whether it will be done; and the reason of my
ignorance is, that I am not acquainted with the will of God in the matter.
That it will be done if it is God's will, is perfectly clear and
indubitable. Again, if I am told that something would happen if God did not
prevent it from happening, I reply confidently that what is to happen is the
action of God, not the event which might otherwise have happened. For God
knows His own future action, and therefore He knows also the effect of that
action in preventing the happening of what would otherwise have happened;
and, beyond all question, what God knows is more certain than what man
thinks. Hence it is as impossible for what is future not to happen, as for
what is past not to have happened; for it can never be God's will that
anything should, in the same sense, be both true and false. Therefore all
that is properly future cannot but happen; what does not happen never was
future; even as all things which are properly in the past did indubitably
take place.
-----------------------------
Bob's comment: In chapter three Augustine seems to be arguing that what
appears to be contrary to nature according to human experience is not
contrary to nature as God knows nature, being the Author of nature. To
repeat Augustine:
"There is, however, no impropriety in saying that God does a thing
contrary to nature, when it is contrary to what we know of nature. For we
give the name nature to the usual common course of nature; and whatever God
does contrary to this, we call a prodigy, or a miracle. But against the
supreme law of nature, which is beyond the knowledge both of the ungodly and
of weak believers, God never acts, any more than He acts against Himself."
So, could God have stopped the rotation of the earth without tidal
forces tearing it and us apart, just as Christ turned water into wine? I
suppose one could argue theoretically (or theologically) that in general God
as omnipotent can do anything. But, to repeat your point, *did* such a
thing happen? I'm much more ready to believe, as I do believe, that Christ
oversaw the transformation of six jars of water into the best wine at the
wedding feast, than I am that God suspended a whole passel of natural laws
to enable the Israelites to defeat the Amorites in battle. Christ did not
move mountains, but with the power of God he did perform small acts of great
purpose--of healings that restored nature, or acts that pre-enacted the
messianic banquet. Perhaps where this conversation ought to go is, Can
acceptance of miraculous acts recorded in Scripture be judged to be
historical events or symbolic stories, on the basis of what appears to be
their purpose?
Bob
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <tdavis@messiah.edu>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 10:36 PM
Subject: God and nature; miracles
> Something seems a bit fishy, in the quotation Bob gave us from Augustine
> about God and nature. I suspect it may be rolled up in the meaning of
> "nature," which would have to be understood in terms of the "natures" of
> things as well as in terms of the "natural" order. I can't quite flesh
this
> out with confidence, but I have my doubts that Augustine would intend to
say
> that God never acts in ways that would be "outside" the "ordinary course
of
> nature," as Boyle would have put it.
>
> In any event, I think God does sometimes act in extraordinary ways, ways
> that simply cannot be fully described with natural categories. For
example,
> I believe that Jesus was conceived without a human father; that the women
> and the disciples went to the right tomb and found it empty; that our Lord
> made real wine from real water in a trice; and that (for lack of better
> language) there was a time when there was no time, before the world was
> brought into being by an inscrutable act of divine power and will. None
of
> these things, IMO, is unscientific, for genuine science cannot proscribe
> events it cannot describe--contrary to David Hume, whose own principle of
> the uniformity of nature rested precariously on his own faith in the
> validity of induction, whose validity he himself doubted.
>
> The question is always, *did* such and such take place, not *could* it
> happen. And those who would make God a constitutional monarch, who
"cannot
> break his own laws," do not understand (IMO) what it means to be "maker of
> heaven and earth."
>
> ted davis
>
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