Only suggestion I have is to note that St. Francis de Sales actually did have mission. He was sent, by an Apostolic authority. -Extraordinary- mission is validated or confirmed by miracles. The Protestant founders were claiming -extraordinary- mission outside of Apostolic authority to correct the Church, similar to an Old Testament era prophet. A prophet’s sayings would typically be validated as being from God by miracles. So, St. Francis de Sales had a powerful point.
The founders of Protestantism had no miracles to validate their claimed extraordinary mission. Miracles within Protestantism are detached from validation of this particular need. Rather, they validate Catholic truth, as God can work through Christians who lack the fullness of the faith. These miracles validate things such as, as you mentioned, the necessity of repentance, God’s mercy and such.
It is also too late for Protestants to have extraordinary mission validated by miracles. These reason is because it must be validated in the first generation, by the first leader or leaders themselves, or else God would be sending a message to mankind, but apparently not wanting them to believe it until much later, which is nonsensical.
Trent, I know I'm about to rain on your parade here, but has it occurred to you that many of the alleged miracles of Rome are almost downright inconsistent with scripture and abusive with respect to the biblical understanding?
A good example of this comes with St. Joseph Cupertino, who is said to have levitated immensely in his lifetime.
Or Vincent Ferrer who is said to have performed 873 miracles.
This sounds like a modern embellishment in the same vain as charismatic healings.
Can you elaborate on your examples of the Miracles done by the Saints as “inconsistent with scripture and abusive with respect to the biblical understanding”? Just seems like hand waving without any context of what you are truly saying. God Bless!
Why does a miracle have to have a previous instance in Scripture to have happened?
I mean, we don’t have a complete record of St. Paul’s life in Scripture, it stops when he’s in Rome. We don’t have a complete record of any of the other apostles either, except for James the greater— and we just have his death, we don’t have everything he did before that point.
At the end of the book of John, there’s even a disclaimer that not everything that Jesus did was recorded. So I’m having trouble following the logic here.
Before I respond to the point you made, I do think that my first question is relevant since my question, as you can see, uses "X", is not only limited to miracles. In fact, it applies to many things as well. For example, the books in the Scriptures are not compiled like the Canon of Scriptures. We don't have instructions to hold our own hands when we pray. Jesus did not explicitly teach that a non-apostle can write Inspired writings or Scripture. The use of rings for weddings is not in the Scriptures. So, if the argument here is that if something, like miracles in the Catholic Church, does not have a parallel case or explicit examples in the Scriptures, then we should reject them, such an argument will affect many things (and I haven't mentioned other things that are not explicitly written in the Scriptures) that both of us agree are correct.
You asked a great question as to how we can validate miracles discussed by Catholic Church to those not familiar to Scriptural readers. Well, when we look into miracles, we look at them from cumulative case perspective. We study these miracles, especially those with strong evidence, and see whether these miraculous claims point to Catholic Church or not. I would say that, if we do this, we would see that miracles in the Catholic Church, as a whole, points to its validity and legitimacy since these miracles are already present in the Early Church, which clearly teaches distinctively Catholic doctrines. You have numerous healings (and healing is explicitly written in Scriptures to be one of the signs from God) even in the Early Church. So, since I would say that from the Early Church, Christianity is simply Catholicism, that these miraculous claims point to the Catholic Church.
Now, even if we don't look into the levitation claim for the meantime, there are numerous Catholic miracles. There are numerous miraculous healings. The quality and the quantity of miracles point to the Catholic Church. I think, we can both agree that when there are qualitatively and quantitatively better miracles found in the Scriptures, we don't have competitors with YHWH. So, that would be a parallel case, if you're looking for, in such a way that when we look at the Catholic Church, this is what we can also see.
Other than this, it's important to see where miracles fall in apologetics or philosophy. In classical theism, we begin first with recognizing that God, who is Pure Act, exists. It's a classical model of God who is giving existence to everything that exists. This God has control of everything in terms of providence and in terms of sustaining them in existence. Created things are only capable of acting in accordance to their potentials based on their nature. So, if there are actions that are clearly above nature, that is above the natural capacity of creatures, such miracles are supernatural and come from God, and in principle, cannot be done even by evil spirits (or else, we say that evil spirits have Divine power which is a contradiction).
It is from this perspective that we analyze Eucharistic miracles that are not just about seeing cardiac muscle on the Eucharistic host (hypothetically, a devil can imitate this, like by transmutation), but the blood remains fresh. This is impossible from a natural perspective and based on the nature of blood. And, you have these other properties that should not be present from a natural perspective (in my previous article, I already cited one blog post on Eucharistic miracles). The miraculous tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe also has properties that go beyond nature. And, of course, we have different healing accounts from Marian apparitions that Cameron Bertuzzi and others discuss in their YouTube videos that are clearly supernatural. Joe Schmid, a former agnostic philosopher who recently converted to the Catholic Church, was planning to make a 12-hour comprehensive case for Catholicism (which would definitely include arguments from miracles) while his page on Substack, together with someone else, is "Veritatis Splendor." I would leave it at them to show these supernatural instances.
Lastly, I recognize that others have miraculous claims as well. I simply don't think they are on par, qualitatively and quantitatively, with Catholic miracles. After all, I am not sure if you think they are on par even with the resurrection of Christ in terms of legitimacy of miraculous claims. I've seen some "hindu miracles" claims, and it's not really good. I don't see them having the same scrutiny that the Catholic Church has done for its own miraculous claims. So, it's not just about having the same claims as others (which may even affect the legitimacy of Biblical miracles if we go to that route). Rather, it's about looking where the evidence leads.
Thank you for your reply. It's my habit not to prolong conversations because, as you know, we have a lot to do in a day, but I appreciate your reply. For now, I'll share my two replies here. First will be a previous Facebook post I made on my Facebook page about miracles. Second will be my specific response to this comment. Here, I will paste my previous article, which may be helpful to your comment.
MIRACLES IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH COME FROM GOD, NOT THE DEVIL
By: Admin Chris Alponsus
The Catholic Church teaches that genuine miracles serve as proof of a person's holiness or the truth of the Church's doctrine. Because of this, miracles within the Catholic Church, such as Eucharistic miracles [1], the Miraculous Tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe [2], the miracles of canonized saints like St. Charbel [3], miracles during the era of the Early Church [4], and others, are evidence of the truth that the Catholic Church was established by our Lord Jesus. However, some non-Catholic Christians object, claiming these miracles are the work of the devil.
Their objection would only hold weight if the devil had the capacity to perform true miracles. However, this contradicts what the Bible teaches. The Word of God confirms that such power is a unique testimony that comes from God. According to the Psalms:
Psalm 77:14
14 Thou art the God who workest wonders, who hast manifested thy might among the peoples.
When Jesus was questioned about His identity, He pointed to the nature of His works, and later Peter preached, saying,
Acts 2:22
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—
Furthermore, the Gospel of John records that miracles are something only God can do, serving as proof that Jesus' teachings are the truth. This is why Nicodemus said to our Lord:
John 3:2
2 This man came to Jesus[a] by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.”
By assuming that true miracles are from the devil, critics imply that evil can mimic the absolute power of God. This is a theological error that contradicts the sovereignty of the Creator. Let us examine the biblical verse that they often use against the Catholic Church:
2 Thessalonians 2:9
9 The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders,
Nothing in this verse says that Satan will perform true miracles during the time of the Anti-Christ, which is the accusation critics level against the Catholic Church. The "signs and wonders" attributed to the devil in the Bible are not genuine miracles, but "lying wonders." These are mere illusions or manipulations performed by the devil or through the trickery of sorcerers, much like the magicians of today. We see this in the example of the sorcerers who imitated Aaron by making frogs appear.
Exodus 8:6-7
6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. 7 But the magicians did the same by their secret arts, and brought frogs upon the land of Egypt.
When it says the magicians imitated Aaron, they did not perform a true miracle. Instead, they used trickery to make frogs appear. This is the explanation found in the commentaries of Protestant scholars, such as "Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers," which states:
“(7) The magicians did so.—It cannot be concluded from this that the magicians had the power of creating frogs. All that the writer means to express is, that they seemed to Pharaoh and to the Court to do on a small scale what Moses and Aaron had done on the largest possible scale. The means which they employed was probably sleight-of-hand [5].”
Even the magicians themselves admitted there were works by Moses and Aaron that they could not replicate, telling Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God” (Exodus 8:19). The belief that the devil has the power to perform true miracles is an attack on the very foundation of Christianity. If the devil could do what these critics claim—simply to discredit Catholic miracles—on what basis can we prove that the Resurrection of Jesus was a divine act and not a deception by the devil?
The Apostle Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 15:14 that their preaching is only meaningful because of the resurrection of Jesus. However, if the critics' view were correct, then even if Jesus rose, we still wouldn't know if His teaching was from God or from the devil intended to make people believe in a "Fake Christ." Such a conclusion is baseless because the initial argument is flawed.
Though some may not realize it, they are acting like the teachers of the Law who claimed Jesus was using the power of the devil (Mark 3:22). The miracles in the Catholic Church are real, and they serve as further proof that its teachings come from God. Amen. +
References:
[1] Eucharistic Miracles: God Under the Microscope | Saint Beluga:
I have seen Sam Shamoun previously defend the legitimacy of the Coptic Church by claiming that the apparitions at Zeitoun were evidence that God is, I suppose, "okay" with their theology, or at least that our Creator endorses it enough to warrant a great sign to lead people into such.
And so my question is, how should one go about deciding what kind of theological claims are and are not vindicated by a sign like this, being that the figure many said to be Our Lady did not speak at all during the length of the apparitions. If one were to posit that it was indeed God working this miracle, or His Mother at the Lord's behest, then it would seem very unfitting that such a grand sign should be done that would seem to vindicate the authenticity of a heretical and schismatic group, especially without any additional theological qualifiers to make it clear to the faithful that this group is indeed schismatic and heretical.
Only suggestion I have is to note that St. Francis de Sales actually did have mission. He was sent, by an Apostolic authority. -Extraordinary- mission is validated or confirmed by miracles. The Protestant founders were claiming -extraordinary- mission outside of Apostolic authority to correct the Church, similar to an Old Testament era prophet. A prophet’s sayings would typically be validated as being from God by miracles. So, St. Francis de Sales had a powerful point.
The founders of Protestantism had no miracles to validate their claimed extraordinary mission. Miracles within Protestantism are detached from validation of this particular need. Rather, they validate Catholic truth, as God can work through Christians who lack the fullness of the faith. These miracles validate things such as, as you mentioned, the necessity of repentance, God’s mercy and such.
It is also too late for Protestants to have extraordinary mission validated by miracles. These reason is because it must be validated in the first generation, by the first leader or leaders themselves, or else God would be sending a message to mankind, but apparently not wanting them to believe it until much later, which is nonsensical.
Trent, I know I'm about to rain on your parade here, but has it occurred to you that many of the alleged miracles of Rome are almost downright inconsistent with scripture and abusive with respect to the biblical understanding?
A good example of this comes with St. Joseph Cupertino, who is said to have levitated immensely in his lifetime.
Or Vincent Ferrer who is said to have performed 873 miracles.
This sounds like a modern embellishment in the same vain as charismatic healings.
Rome does not fair differently here.
Can you elaborate on your examples of the Miracles done by the Saints as “inconsistent with scripture and abusive with respect to the biblical understanding”? Just seems like hand waving without any context of what you are truly saying. God Bless!
Yeah, so let's look at the scriptures, where do we find instances of miracles imitating levitation in scripture?
Where do we find instances where one apostle or figure performs miracles into the thousands?
It's theatrical embellishment.
Why does a miracle have to have a previous instance in Scripture to have happened?
I mean, we don’t have a complete record of St. Paul’s life in Scripture, it stops when he’s in Rome. We don’t have a complete record of any of the other apostles either, except for James the greater— and we just have his death, we don’t have everything he did before that point.
At the end of the book of John, there’s even a disclaimer that not everything that Jesus did was recorded. So I’m having trouble following the logic here.
Just wondering, is it your view that:
1. If X is not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, even as a similar case, therefore X is inconsistent with Scripture and should be rejected?
2. God cannot perform miracles today that are not recorded in Scripture?
Thank you.
Let me put it this way:
How would you propose for me to validate the miracles produced by Rome if these are not familiar to scriptural readers?
Put it in another way, how would I happen to know that levitation is a true miracle of God when there are groups making similar miraculous claims?
This isn't Atheism arguing this; there are true miracles and false ones. How am I supposed to know if these are not associated with sorcery?
Your claims are good as any other ones.
So, this would be my last reply.
Before I respond to the point you made, I do think that my first question is relevant since my question, as you can see, uses "X", is not only limited to miracles. In fact, it applies to many things as well. For example, the books in the Scriptures are not compiled like the Canon of Scriptures. We don't have instructions to hold our own hands when we pray. Jesus did not explicitly teach that a non-apostle can write Inspired writings or Scripture. The use of rings for weddings is not in the Scriptures. So, if the argument here is that if something, like miracles in the Catholic Church, does not have a parallel case or explicit examples in the Scriptures, then we should reject them, such an argument will affect many things (and I haven't mentioned other things that are not explicitly written in the Scriptures) that both of us agree are correct.
You asked a great question as to how we can validate miracles discussed by Catholic Church to those not familiar to Scriptural readers. Well, when we look into miracles, we look at them from cumulative case perspective. We study these miracles, especially those with strong evidence, and see whether these miraculous claims point to Catholic Church or not. I would say that, if we do this, we would see that miracles in the Catholic Church, as a whole, points to its validity and legitimacy since these miracles are already present in the Early Church, which clearly teaches distinctively Catholic doctrines. You have numerous healings (and healing is explicitly written in Scriptures to be one of the signs from God) even in the Early Church. So, since I would say that from the Early Church, Christianity is simply Catholicism, that these miraculous claims point to the Catholic Church.
Now, even if we don't look into the levitation claim for the meantime, there are numerous Catholic miracles. There are numerous miraculous healings. The quality and the quantity of miracles point to the Catholic Church. I think, we can both agree that when there are qualitatively and quantitatively better miracles found in the Scriptures, we don't have competitors with YHWH. So, that would be a parallel case, if you're looking for, in such a way that when we look at the Catholic Church, this is what we can also see.
Other than this, it's important to see where miracles fall in apologetics or philosophy. In classical theism, we begin first with recognizing that God, who is Pure Act, exists. It's a classical model of God who is giving existence to everything that exists. This God has control of everything in terms of providence and in terms of sustaining them in existence. Created things are only capable of acting in accordance to their potentials based on their nature. So, if there are actions that are clearly above nature, that is above the natural capacity of creatures, such miracles are supernatural and come from God, and in principle, cannot be done even by evil spirits (or else, we say that evil spirits have Divine power which is a contradiction).
It is from this perspective that we analyze Eucharistic miracles that are not just about seeing cardiac muscle on the Eucharistic host (hypothetically, a devil can imitate this, like by transmutation), but the blood remains fresh. This is impossible from a natural perspective and based on the nature of blood. And, you have these other properties that should not be present from a natural perspective (in my previous article, I already cited one blog post on Eucharistic miracles). The miraculous tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe also has properties that go beyond nature. And, of course, we have different healing accounts from Marian apparitions that Cameron Bertuzzi and others discuss in their YouTube videos that are clearly supernatural. Joe Schmid, a former agnostic philosopher who recently converted to the Catholic Church, was planning to make a 12-hour comprehensive case for Catholicism (which would definitely include arguments from miracles) while his page on Substack, together with someone else, is "Veritatis Splendor." I would leave it at them to show these supernatural instances.
Lastly, I recognize that others have miraculous claims as well. I simply don't think they are on par, qualitatively and quantitatively, with Catholic miracles. After all, I am not sure if you think they are on par even with the resurrection of Christ in terms of legitimacy of miraculous claims. I've seen some "hindu miracles" claims, and it's not really good. I don't see them having the same scrutiny that the Catholic Church has done for its own miraculous claims. So, it's not just about having the same claims as others (which may even affect the legitimacy of Biblical miracles if we go to that route). Rather, it's about looking where the evidence leads.
I hope that helps. Have a blessed day!
Thank you for your reply. It's my habit not to prolong conversations because, as you know, we have a lot to do in a day, but I appreciate your reply. For now, I'll share my two replies here. First will be a previous Facebook post I made on my Facebook page about miracles. Second will be my specific response to this comment. Here, I will paste my previous article, which may be helpful to your comment.
MIRACLES IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH COME FROM GOD, NOT THE DEVIL
By: Admin Chris Alponsus
The Catholic Church teaches that genuine miracles serve as proof of a person's holiness or the truth of the Church's doctrine. Because of this, miracles within the Catholic Church, such as Eucharistic miracles [1], the Miraculous Tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe [2], the miracles of canonized saints like St. Charbel [3], miracles during the era of the Early Church [4], and others, are evidence of the truth that the Catholic Church was established by our Lord Jesus. However, some non-Catholic Christians object, claiming these miracles are the work of the devil.
Their objection would only hold weight if the devil had the capacity to perform true miracles. However, this contradicts what the Bible teaches. The Word of God confirms that such power is a unique testimony that comes from God. According to the Psalms:
Psalm 77:14
14 Thou art the God who workest wonders, who hast manifested thy might among the peoples.
When Jesus was questioned about His identity, He pointed to the nature of His works, and later Peter preached, saying,
Acts 2:22
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—
Furthermore, the Gospel of John records that miracles are something only God can do, serving as proof that Jesus' teachings are the truth. This is why Nicodemus said to our Lord:
John 3:2
2 This man came to Jesus[a] by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.”
By assuming that true miracles are from the devil, critics imply that evil can mimic the absolute power of God. This is a theological error that contradicts the sovereignty of the Creator. Let us examine the biblical verse that they often use against the Catholic Church:
2 Thessalonians 2:9
9 The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders,
Nothing in this verse says that Satan will perform true miracles during the time of the Anti-Christ, which is the accusation critics level against the Catholic Church. The "signs and wonders" attributed to the devil in the Bible are not genuine miracles, but "lying wonders." These are mere illusions or manipulations performed by the devil or through the trickery of sorcerers, much like the magicians of today. We see this in the example of the sorcerers who imitated Aaron by making frogs appear.
Exodus 8:6-7
6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. 7 But the magicians did the same by their secret arts, and brought frogs upon the land of Egypt.
When it says the magicians imitated Aaron, they did not perform a true miracle. Instead, they used trickery to make frogs appear. This is the explanation found in the commentaries of Protestant scholars, such as "Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers," which states:
“(7) The magicians did so.—It cannot be concluded from this that the magicians had the power of creating frogs. All that the writer means to express is, that they seemed to Pharaoh and to the Court to do on a small scale what Moses and Aaron had done on the largest possible scale. The means which they employed was probably sleight-of-hand [5].”
Even the magicians themselves admitted there were works by Moses and Aaron that they could not replicate, telling Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God” (Exodus 8:19). The belief that the devil has the power to perform true miracles is an attack on the very foundation of Christianity. If the devil could do what these critics claim—simply to discredit Catholic miracles—on what basis can we prove that the Resurrection of Jesus was a divine act and not a deception by the devil?
The Apostle Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 15:14 that their preaching is only meaningful because of the resurrection of Jesus. However, if the critics' view were correct, then even if Jesus rose, we still wouldn't know if His teaching was from God or from the devil intended to make people believe in a "Fake Christ." Such a conclusion is baseless because the initial argument is flawed.
Though some may not realize it, they are acting like the teachers of the Law who claimed Jesus was using the power of the devil (Mark 3:22). The miracles in the Catholic Church are real, and they serve as further proof that its teachings come from God. Amen. +
References:
[1] Eucharistic Miracles: God Under the Microscope | Saint Beluga:
https://www.saintbeluga.org/eucharistic-miracles-god-under-the-microscope
[2] The Science (or Lack thereof) Behind Juan Diego's Tilma | Magis Center:
https://www.magiscenter.com/blog/the-science-or-lack-thereof-behind-juan-diegos-tilma
[3] Testimonials | Family of Saint Sharbel:
https://www.familyofsaintsharbel.org/testimonials.html
[4] What the Early Church Believed: Miracles | Catholic Answers:
https://www.catholic.com/tract/do-miracles-still-occur
[5] Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers | Biblehub:
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/exodus/8-7.htm
Beautiful job, brother
Catholicism teaches a hawk died after the bird it attacked responded with an “Ave Maria” 😂
I have seen Sam Shamoun previously defend the legitimacy of the Coptic Church by claiming that the apparitions at Zeitoun were evidence that God is, I suppose, "okay" with their theology, or at least that our Creator endorses it enough to warrant a great sign to lead people into such.
And so my question is, how should one go about deciding what kind of theological claims are and are not vindicated by a sign like this, being that the figure many said to be Our Lady did not speak at all during the length of the apparitions. If one were to posit that it was indeed God working this miracle, or His Mother at the Lord's behest, then it would seem very unfitting that such a grand sign should be done that would seem to vindicate the authenticity of a heretical and schismatic group, especially without any additional theological qualifiers to make it clear to the faithful that this group is indeed schismatic and heretical.