As the conflict between the God of Israel and the gods of Egypt begins in earnest in Exodus 7, Moses and Aaron must first pass the qualifying exams before they can enter into the divine contest as agents or instruments of YHWH. The qualifying exam requires that they do something supernatural to prove that “the gods were with them,” as Pharaoh might say. So, they perform the staff-into-snake miracle (Exod 7:8-10). Somewhat surprisingly, the Egyptian magicians match Moses and Aaron’s sign (v11). Though there is debate over what exactly these magicians do,[1] I’m inclined to understand it as supernatural. That should not be an insurmountable obstacle of belief for us. After all, we believe that there is a whole unseen world of spiritual activity that exists all around us and does interact with us; every kind of miracle proves that there is more than meets the eye. With the remainder of this reflection, we will consider the marvel of miracles.
In The City of God, Augustine addresses an objection lodged against the teaching in Scripture regarding the eternal punishment of unbelievers. It is objected that immortality is not in the nature of humanity, so eternal punishment cannot be possible. In other words, a thing cannot “come to be different from what had formerly been known about its fixed nature.”[2] In response, Augustine points to the account by Varro that in his day Venus changed in appearance in a way that seemed to be contrary to nature. In response, Augustine appeals to God’s continuing providence and then remarks, “For how can anything done by the will of God be contrary to nature, when the will of so great a creator constitutes the nature of each created thing? A portent [or miracle] therefore happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what is known of nature.”[3] Augustine’s argument turns in part on the fact that our collective experience of creation cannot, even today, account for all of the complexity of nature. As time progresses and scientific inquiry continues, what was once considered contrary to nature can later be regarded as a known fact. However, there is more to Augustine’s argument; he appeals to the fact that the physical nature of our first parent’s bodies was different before and after the fall.[4] Therefore, though we “know” that human flesh fails, immortality is not necessarily contrary to nature as it was or as it will be, according to the Scriptures.
This insight that nature as it is known does not perfectly overlap with nature as it is, when coordinated with the doctrine of the fall, reminds us that no process of empirical investigation can move without hindrance from observation to conclusion regarding how the world is—and especially not how it ought to be. In addressing the relationship between creation ordinances and the moral law, Henk van den Belt cautions against using creation ordinances to norm society. “We no longer have access to the original creation in a fallen world and therefore we always have a distorted image of the creation order. It is difficult to test what is original and what is the consequence of sin.”[5] When this is applied to the realm of miracles, it ought to incline us away from summarily dismissing the possibility that walking sticks could turn into snakes. If nothing else, these miracles, these signs, suggest that the essence of nature far exceeds what we know even today.
And when we turn to consider the miracles of Jesus, we must also factor in the future, for Jesus’ miracles, in addition to pointing to his deity and authenticating his message, were an inbreaking of the eschatological order of the world, a peek behind the veil of the new creation that will come with Christ’s second advent. It is only then that nature as it is known and nature as it is will be one. As Bavinck says about the new heavens and new earth, then “miracle will have come ‘nature.’ What ought to be and what is will be reconciled. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world will then be one (Rev. 21-22).”[6]
[1] John D. Currid, A Study Commentary on Exodus, vol. 1 of EP (Welwyn Garden City: EP Books, 2000), 155.
[2] Aurelius Augustinus, “The City of God against the Pagans: Books XXI - XXII,” trans. William M. Green, LCL 417 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 49.
[3] Augustinus, “City of God,” 51.
[4] Augustinus, “City of God,” 49.
[5] Henk Van Den Belt, Geestspraak: Hoe We de Bijbel Kunnen Verstaan (Utrecht: KokBoekencentrum, 2024), 351–53.
[6] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 1:339.
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