Drawing on St. Maximus the Confessor, this article argues that miracles are best defined as marvelous displays of God’s love that restore or renew created realities by putting them back on track toward their final end or aim. The reason water carried Jesus is that he, the final end or completion of humanity, turned water into what water was always already meant to be. When Peter walked on water, divinized Peter did this same, human thing in the same, divine manner. And once we will have learned to do human things in a divine manner, our divinization will be the miracle that completes creation.
This reminds me of something EL Mascall said in his amazing book-Christ, the Christian, and the Church: A Study of the Incarnation and Its Consequences p.52- in it he talks about the powers of unfallen human nature. Never thought about it before and looking forward to what this article will do to open my eyes more.
“Again, while, as has been said, we must, in considering those acts of incarnate Lord which exceed the forces of human nature as we know it in ourselves, recognize the distinction between the powers that are proper to unfallen humanity and those that are property of the creator alone, we must also note that the line of demarcation between these two is in practice difficult for us to draw precisely. For instance, when Christ stills the storm, are we to see this miracle as an exercise of divine omnipotence or as an exercise of that Lordship over the lower creation with which man was endowed in his state of innocence, but has lost through sin? It is extremely difficult to venture a confident opinion upon this. Some of Christ’s miracles, and utterances are clearly possible to him only because he is God; and there are a whole host of words and acts which any one of us could say and do; but in between these, there is a mass of material concerning which we are unable, owing to our own ignorance of the precise limits of unfallen human nature as such to say, with assurance whether we are witnessing the action of God making use of human nature as the pure instrument of his omnipotence or are witnessing the exercise of the powers of perfect human nature. It is nonetheless important for a correct understanding of the incarnation to understand the difference in principle that there is between the two. For, among other consequences, the former of these must be forever beyond our attainment, whereas we may expect the latter to be restored to mankind when the incorporation of the human race into Christ is complete.”
Excited to read the full article!