Miracles convert!  Whether they happen or not.  That’s been my thesis in this thread.  And now I keep piling on the evidence.  (See my book Triumph of Christianity. [Simon and Schuster])

In addition to such legendary tales of apostolic adventures, we have two narratives from the early centuries that describe missionary activities of later evangelists, one active in the third Christian century and one in the fourth.  Even though these are presented as ostensibly historical accounts, they more easily align themselves with “tales of a holy person” known as “hagiography” – a highly pious and legendary kind of writing that celebrates the miraculous deeds of a Christian saint.

The Life of Gregory the Wonderworker

The third-century figure of Gregory “Thaumaturgus,” that is, the “Wonderworker,” is known to us from a biographical sketch produced over a century after his death by a namesake, Gregory of Nyssa (335-394 CE).  Gregory of Nyssa was a major theologian in the Christian church, most famous for his contributions to the ongoing discussions centered on the doctrine of the Trinity.    His narrative of the Wonderworker shows how in the fourth-century imagination, the earlier conversion of the pagan masses came through clear and compelling demonstrations of divine power.  The God of the Christians routed the gods of the pagans in a series of direct confrontations.  The Life declares that whereas Gregory could find only seventeen Christians when he arrived in New Caesearea, a city in the region of Pontus (northern Turkey), when he completed his missionary campaigns only seventeen pagans remained.

The account’s first episode provides a foretaste of what is to come.  The entire region is said to have been filled with pagan temples, altars, and idols.  When Gregory arrives, a violent rain storm forces him to enter a pagan temple.  It is filled with the filthy stench of sacrifices, and he purifies it by making the sign of the cross and invoking the name of Christ, putting the terror of God into the resident demons – that is, the pagan gods.   Gregory spends the night in the temple saying prayers and singing hymns.  The next morning, when the custodian of the temple arrives, the demons appear to him and inform him that they are now barred from the temple.  He is furious with Gregory, but the saint tells him that his God has the power to order the pagan demons at will.

The temple custodian asks for proof, so Gregory tears off a piece of paper and writes a command to the demons: “Gregory to Satan, Enter!” [1] The custodian places the message on the altar, and only then is he able to perform his customary sacrifices.  “When these things happened he began to grasp the fact that Gregory possessed a divine power, by which he appeared to have overwhelming superiority over the demons.”  He asks for a further demonstration of divine power and the saint is more than happy to comply.   Outside the temple is a large boulder, far too heavy for a human to lift.  Gregory orders it to move.  It levitates on its own and glides through the air to settle in another place.  “When this had happened, the man straightaway believed in the word, and left everything (including his family) to follow Gregory.”  The Life explicitly states that “he was converted to the true God,” not “by some sound or word,” but by the great miracle.

That was just the beginning.  Soon, “the inhabitants of the town poured out en masse as to some account of a new marvel, and all were eager to see who that Gregory is who, though a human being, has power like an emperor over those whom they deemed gods, apparently able to order the demons to and fro like slaves wherever he might will.”  By the end of Gregory’s impressive displays of divine power, virtually the entire region converts.

 

The Life of Martin of Tours

Within about twenty years of Gregory of Nyssa’s description of the remarkable missionary endeavors of the Wonderworker, the Christian writer Sulpicius Severus (355-420 CE) produced an account of another missionary saint, Martin of Tours, in Gaul, modern France.   In this case, however, the subject was a contemporary of the author.  He was, in fact, his spiritual mentor.  Sulpicius claims he based his narrative on personal interviews with the saint.

Here too we find numerous accounts of amazing deeds, as Martin is empowered by God to cast out demons and raise the dead.  But it was the miracle of a falling pine tree that converted the masses.

Martin is said to have come to a village with a pagan temple, and to have begun to chop down a sacred tree, because, he maintains, it is dedicated to the resident demon.  A crowd of pagans gathers and objects to his proceeding – naturally enough, as it is a desecration of their sacred site.  After an angry exchange, one of crowd offers to chop down the massive tree if Martin agrees to stand beneath it to see if he can avoid being crushed.  Martin is not one to back down from a challenge.  He stands beneath the tree, the pagans cut it down, it begins to fall with a loud crash, but before it can land on the saint, he makes the sign of the cross, and then “you would have thought it had been repelled by a kind of tornado.  The tree fell in a different direction, so that it almost flattened the country men who had been standing all around the place.”  The miraculous aversion of disaster has its desired effect.  “It was agreed that on that day, salvation had come to those regions.  For there was almost no one from that immense multitude of pagans who did not believe in the Lord Jesus, and who did not renounce the impiety of their error.”[2]

As Martin travels around from one village to another, destroying more pagan temples, the miracles continue to occur.  In one place the villagers stand by helplessly as he tears their sacred place down to the foundation, smashes its altars, and reduces the idols “to dust.”  Once he is finished, the pagans realize they had been frozen in place and unable to move, transfixed by a divine power to prevent them from interfering with the man of God.  As a result: “Nearly all of them believed in the Lord Jesus, claiming openly and confidently that they should worship the God of Martin and forsake the idols that had been unable to assist either them or others.”

[1] Gregory of Nyssa, “On the Life and Wonders of Our Father Among the Saints, Gregory the Wonderworker.”  I have used the translation of Michael Slusser, Fathers of the Church: St. Gregory Thaumaturgus Life and Works (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998).

[2] “Life of St. Martin,” 13.8-9.  I have used the translation of Richard J. Goodrich in Ancient Christian Writers.  Suplicius Severus: The Complete Works (New York: Newman Press, 2015).