The essays in this volume were written when John Henry Newman
was a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He wrote the first, on
biblical miracles "The Miracles of Scripture," in 1825-26, as a
relatively young man; the other, "The Miracles of Early
Ecclesiastical History," was written in 1842-43. A comparison of
the two essays displays a shift in Newman's theological
stances.
In the earlier essay, Newman argues in accordance with the
theology of evidence of his time, maintaining that the age of
miracles was limited to those recorded in the Old Testament
scriptures and in the Gospels and Acts. He asserts that biblical
miracles served to demonstrate the divine inspiration of biblical
revelation and to attest to the divinity of Christ. However, with
the end of the apostolic age, the age of miracles came to an end;
miracles reported from the early ages of the Church Newman
dismissed as suspicious and possibly fraudulent. With this view,
Newman entered into an ongoing debate between the skepticism of
Hume and Paine and its continuation in the utilitarianism of
Bentham, on the one hand, and the views of Christian apologists
rebutting Hume's arguments, on the other.
In "The Miracles of Early Ecclesiastical History," Newman can be
seen as coming closer to accepting the doctrines of the Catholic
Church. He rejects the stance he took in "The Miracles of
Scripture," now arguing for a continuity of sacred history between
the biblical and ecclesiastical periods. He had clearly abandoned
the position of "evidence theologians" that miracles ended after
the time of the Apostles. Newman's movement between the writing of
the two essays is essentially a growing into a deeper awareness of
the Church as a divine society in whose life miracles and
supernatural gifts were to be expected.
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