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104-450: The root of the word divinity is the Latin divus meaning of or belonging to a God ( deus ). The word entered English from Medieval Latin in the 14th century. Divinity as a quality has two distinct usages: Overlap occurs between these usages because deities or godly entities are often identical with or identified by the powers and forces that are credited to them—in many cases, a deity

208-564: A Goddess and a Horned God , thereby being generally dualistic . In traditional Wicca, as expressed in the writings of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente , the emphasis is on the theme of divine gender polarity, and the God and Goddess are regarded as equal and opposite divine cosmic forces. In some newer forms of Wicca, such as feminist or Dianic Wicca , the Goddess is given primacy or even exclusivity. In some forms of traditional witchcraft that share

312-945: A god-sent wind saved them from Mongol invasion. Prayers or propitiations are often offered to specific gods to garner favorable interventions in particular enterprises: e.g. safe journeys, success in war, or a season of bountiful crops. Many faiths around the world—from Japanese Shinto and Chinese traditional religion, to certain African practices and the faiths derived from those in the Caribbean, to Native American beliefs—hold that ancestral or household deities offer daily protection and blessings . In monotheistic religions, divine intervention may take very direct forms: miracles , visions , or intercessions by blessed figures. Transcendent force or power may also operate through more subtle and indirect paths. Monotheistic faiths generally support some version of divine providence , which acknowledges that

416-536: A yechidut , a spiritual audience with a tzadik : barren women become pregnant, cancer tumors shrink, wayward children become pious. Many Hasidim claim that miracles can take place in merit of partaking of the shirayim (the leftovers from the rebbe 's meal), such as miraculous healing or blessings of wealth or piety. Thomas Paine , one of the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution , wrote "All

520-461: A belief in the divine potential of humanity; Smith taught a form of divinization where mortal men and women can become like god through salvation and exaltation . Lorenzo Snow succinctly summarized this using a couplet , which is often repeated within the LDS Church: "As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be." Wiccan views of divinity are generally theistic , and revolve around

624-545: A benefit without doing the work necessary to merit it. Miracles continue to be occasionally reported in the practice of Hinduism, with an example of a miracle modernly reported in Hinduism being the Hindu milk miracle of September 1995, with additional occurrences in 2006 and 2010, wherein statues of certain Hindu deities were seen to drink milk offered to them. The scientific explanation for

728-469: A cause immediately available. Rather the miracle is for combating the ignorance it entails, like a political project. According to the philosopher David Hume , a miracle is "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent". The crux of his argument is this: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such

832-603: A collection of Buddhist miracle stories. Miracles play an important role in the veneration of Buddhist relics in Southern Asia. Thus, Somawathie Stupa in Sri Lanka is an increasingly popular site of pilgrimage and tourist destination thanks to multiple reports about miraculous rays of light, apparitions and modern legends , which often have been fixed in photographs and movies. The gospels record three sorts of miracles performed by Jesus: exorcisms , cures, and natural wonders. In

936-513: A different country decades after having left school, they may consider this miraculous . However, a colossal number of events happen every moment on Earth; thus, extremely unlikely coincidences also happen every moment. Events considered impossible are therefore not so – they are just increasingly rare and dependent on the number of individual events. British mathematician J. E. Littlewood suggested that individuals should statistically expect one-in-a-million events to happen to them at

1040-516: A fever which could be cured naturally, and it may rain independently of the working of the principles of nature. For a majority of Evangelical Christians, biblicism ensures that the miracles described in the Bible are still relevant and may be present in the life of the believer. Healings, academic or professional successes, the birth of a child after several attempts, the end of an addiction , etc., would be tangible examples of God's intervention with

1144-442: A kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact which it endeavours to establish." By Hume's definition, a miracle goes against our regular experience of how the universe works. As miracles are single events, the evidence for them is always limited and we experience them rarely. On the basis of experience and evidence, the probability that miracle occurred is always less than the probability that it did not occur. As it

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1248-517: A knowledge of Classical or Old Latin by the use of rare or archaic forms and sequences. Though they had not existed together historically, it is common that an author would use grammatical ideas of the two periods Republican and archaic, placing them equally in the same sentence. Also, many undistinguished scholars had limited education in "proper" Latin, or had been influenced in their writings by Vulgar Latin. Many striking differences between classical and Medieval Latin are found in orthography . Perhaps

1352-633: A lame buttermilk vendor, and the rescue of Portuguese sailors from a violent sea storm. In addition to these, the Catholic Church attributes miraculous causes to many otherwise inexplicable phenomena on a case-by-case basis. Only after all other possible explanations have been asserted to be inadequate will the church assume divine intervention and declare the miracle worthy of veneration by their followers. The church does not, however, enjoin belief in any extra-Scriptural miracle as an article of faith or as necessary for salvation . Thomas Aquinas ,

1456-497: A living language and was instead a scholarly language of the minority of educated men (and a tiny number of women) in medieval Europe, used in official documents more than for everyday communication. This resulted in two major features of Medieval Latin compared with Classical Latin, though when it is compared to the other vernacular languages, Medieval Latin developed very few changes. There are many prose constructions written by authors of this period that can be considered "showing off"

1560-769: A miracle as "a less common kind of God 's activity in which he arouses people's awe and wonder and bears witness to himself." A deistic perspective of God's relation to the world defines a miracle as a direct intervention of God into the world. A miracle may be false information or simply a fictional story, rather than something that truly happened. A miracle experience may be due to cognitive errors (e.g. overthinking , jumping to conclusions ) or psychological errors (e.g. hallucinations ) of witnesses . Use of some drugs such as psychedelics (e.g. ecstasy ) may produce similar effects to religious experiences . Statistically improbable events are sometimes called miracles. For instance, when three classmates coincidentally meet in

1664-471: A miracle as a transgression of a law of nature, but Kierkegaard, writing as his pseudonym Johannes Climacus , regards any historical reports to be less than certain, including historical reports of miracles, as all historical knowledge is always doubtful and open to approximation. James Keller states that the "claim that God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive implies that God

1768-452: A miraculous sign in heaven is a prominent fourth-century example. Since the Age of Enlightenment , miracles have often needed to be rationalized: C.S. Lewis , Norman Geisler , William Lane Craig , and other 20th-century Christians have argued that miracles are reasonable and plausible. For example, Lewis said that a miracle is something that comes totally out of the blue. If for thousands of years

1872-484: A prominent Doctor of the Church , divided miracles into three types in his Summa contra Gentiles : Things that are at times divinely accomplished, apart from the generally established order in things, are customarily called miracles; for we admire with some astonishment a certain event when we observe the effect but do not know its cause. And since one and the same cause is at times known to some people and unknown to others,

1976-539: A rebirth of Latin literature and learning after the depressed period following the final disintegration of the authority of the Western Roman Empire. Although it was simultaneously developing into the Romance languages, Latin itself remained very conservative, as it was no longer a native language and there were many ancient and medieval grammar books to give one standard form. On the other hand, strictly speaking there

2080-639: A similar duotheistic theology, the Horned God is given precedence over the Goddess. Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages . In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned as the main medium of scholarly exchange, as

2184-491: A thing that has a completely hidden cause is wondrous in an unqualified way, and this the name, miracle, suggests; namely, what is of itself filled with admirable wonder, not simply in relation to one person or another. Now, absolutely speaking, the cause hidden from every man is God. In fact, we proved above that no man in the present state of life can grasp His essence intellectually. Therefore, those things must properly be called miraculous which are done by divine power apart from

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2288-853: A woman can become pregnant only by sexual intercourse with a man, then if she were to become pregnant without a man, it would be a miracle. Others argue that Jesus's healing miracles dealt with conversion and somatization disorders , could manifest as blindness , paralysis etc. In a Mediterranean context, healing was also defined as restoring a person's social standing. Some diseases, like leprosy , caused immense social stigma. There have been numerous claims of miracles by people of most Christian denominations, including but not limited to faith healings and exorcisms. Miracle reports are especially prevalent in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostal or Charismatic churches. The Catholic Church believes miracles are works of God , either directly, or through

2392-559: Is Honi HaM'agel , who was famous for his ability to successfully pray for rain. There are people who obscure all miracles by explaining them in terms of the laws of nature. When these heretics who do not believe in miracles disappear and faith increases in the world, then the Mashiach will come. For the essence of the Redemption primarily depends on this – that is, on faith Most Chasidic communities are rife with tales of miracles that follow

2496-540: Is Venantius Fortunatus ( c.  530  – c.  600 ). This was also a period of transmission: the Roman patrician Boethius ( c.  480 –524) translated part of Aristotle 's logical corpus, thus preserving it for the Latin West , and wrote the influential literary and philosophical treatise De consolatione Philosophiae ; Cassiodorus ( c.  485  – c.  585 ) founded an important library at

2600-416: Is an equivalent cohort of malefic supernatural beings and powers, such as demons , devils , afreet , etc., which are not conventionally referred to as divine; demonic is often used instead. Polytheistic and animistic systems of belief make no such distinction; gods and other beings of transcendent power often have complex, ignoble, or even incomprehensible motivations for their acts. Note that while

2704-448: Is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific laws and accordingly gets attributed to some supernatural or praeternatural cause. Various religions often attribute a phenomenon characterized as miraculous to the actions of a supernatural being, (especially) a deity , a miracle worker , a saint , or a religious leader . Informally, English-speakers often use the word miracle to characterise any beneficial event that

2808-411: Is expressed (for instance) by Thomas Jefferson , and the latter by David Hume . Theologians typically say that, with divine providence , God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator , may work without, above, or against it as well. The word miracle is usually used to describe any beneficial event that is physically impossible or impossible to confirm by nature. Wayne Grudem defines

2912-641: Is in accordance with the will of God. The doctrine of the divine right of kings was introduced as late as the 17th century, proposing that kings rule by divine decree; Japanese Emperors ruled by divine mandate until the inception of the Japanese constitution after World War II . Less politically, most faiths have any number of people that are believed to have been touched by divine forces: saints , prophets , heroes , oracles , martyrs , and enlightened beings, among others. Saint Francis of Assisi , in Catholicism,

3016-655: Is merely a power or force personified—and these powers and forces may then be extended or granted to mortal individuals. For instance, Jehovah is closely associated with storms and thunder throughout much of the Old Testament . He is said to speak in thunder, and thunder is seen as a token of his anger. This power was then extended to prophets like Moses and Samuel , who caused thunderous storms to rain down on their enemies. Divinity always carries connotations of goodness , beauty , beneficence, justice , and other positive, pro-social attributes. In monotheistic faiths there

3120-518: Is no real consensus on the exact boundary where Late Latin ends and Medieval Latin begins. Some scholarly surveys begin with the rise of early Ecclesiastical Latin in the middle of the 4th century, others around 500, and still others with the replacement of written Late Latin by written Romance languages starting around the year 900. The terms Medieval Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin are sometimes used synonymously, though some scholars draw distinctions. Ecclesiastical Latin refers specifically to

3224-500: Is rational to believe what is more probable, we are not supposed to have a good reason to believe that a miracle occurred. According to the Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher "every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant". The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard , following Hume and Johann Georg Hamann , a Humean scholar, agrees with Hume's definition of

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3328-445: Is said to have received instruction directly from God and it is believed that he grants plenary indulgence to all who confess their sins and visit his chapel on the appropriate day. In Greek mythology, Achilles ' mother bathed him in the river Styx to give him immortality, and Hercules —as the son of Zeus —inherited near-godly powers. In religious Taoism , Laozi is venerated as a saint with his own powers. Various individuals in

3432-606: Is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature , such as surviving a natural disaster , or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood (e.g. "the miracle of childbirth"). Some coincidences may be seen as miracles. A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many writers to dismiss miracles as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position

3536-673: Is this: Colossians 2:9 The word "divine" in the New Testament is the Greek word θείας ( theias ), and is the adjective form of "divinity". Biblical examples from the King James Bible are below: The most prominent conception of divine entities in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is the Godhead , a divine council of three distinct beings: Elohim ( the Father ), Jehovah (

3640-573: Is unfair." According to a 2011 poll by the Pew Research Center, more than 90 percent of evangelical Christians believe miracles still take place. While Christians see God as sometimes intervening in human activities, Muslims see Allah as a direct cause of all events. "God's overwhelming closeness makes it easy for Muslims to admit the miraculous in the world." The Haedong Kosung-jon of Korea (Biographies of High Monks) records that King Beopheung of Silla had desired to promulgate Buddhism as

3744-640: The Gospel of John , the miracles are referred to as "signs" and the emphasis is on God demonstrating his underlying normal activity in remarkable ways. In the New Testament, the greatest miracle is the resurrection of Jesus , the event central to Christian faith. Jesus explains in the New Testament that miracles are performed by faith in God. "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'move from here to there' and it will move." ( Gospel of Matthew 17:20). After Jesus returned to heaven,

3848-507: The Tanakh . Examples include prophets, such as Elijah who performed miracles like the raising of a widow's dead son (1 Kings 17:17–24) and Elisha whose miracles include multiplying the poor widow's jar of oil (2 Kings 4:1–7) and restoring to life the son of the woman of Shunem (2 Kings 4:18–37). The Torah describes many miracles related to Moses during his time as a prophet and the Exodus of

3952-533: The faith and prayer , by the Holy Spirit . In the 1980s, the neo-charismatic movement re-emphasized miracles and faith healing . In certain churches, a special place is thus reserved for faith healings with laying on of hands during worship services or for campaigns evangelization. Faith healing or divine healing is considered to be an inheritance of Jesus acquired by his death and resurrection. In Hinduism, miracles are focused on episodes of liberation of

4056-477: The liturgical language of the Church , and as the working language of science, literature, law, and administration. Medieval Latin represented a continuation of Classical Latin and Late Latin , with enhancements for new concepts as well as for the increasing integration of Christianity. Despite some meaningful differences from Classical Latin, its writers did not regard it as a fundamentally different language. There

4160-579: The syntax of some Medieval Latin writers, although Classical Latin continued to be held in high esteem and studied as models for literary compositions. The high point of the development of Medieval Latin as a literary language came with the Carolingian Renaissance , a rebirth of learning kindled under the patronage of Charlemagne , king of the Franks . Alcuin was Charlemagne's Latin secretary and an important writer in his own right; his influence led to

4264-552: The 5th century saw the literary activities of the great Christian authors Jerome ( c.  347 –420) and Augustine of Hippo (354–430), whose texts had an enormous influence on theological thought of the Middle Ages, and of the latter's disciple Prosper of Aquitaine ( c.  390  – c.  455 ). Of the later 5th century and early 6th century, Sidonius Apollinaris ( c.  430 – after 489) and Ennodius (474–521), both from Gaul, are well known for their poems, as

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4368-447: The Book of Acts records the disciples of Jesus praying to God to grant that miracles be done in his name for the purpose of convincing onlookers that he is alive. ( Acts 4:29–31). Other passages mention false prophets who will be able to perform miracles to deceive "if possible, even the elect of Christ" (Matthew 24:24). 2 Thessalonians 2:9 says, "And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom

4472-589: The Buddhist faith, beginning with Siddhartha , are considered to be enlightened, and in religious forms of Buddhism they are credited with divine powers. Christ in the Bible is said to be God's Son and is said to have performed divine miracles. In general, mortals with divine qualities are carefully distinguished from the deity or deities in their religion's main pantheon . Even the Christian faith, which generally holds Christ to be identical to God, distinguishes between God

4576-475: The Christian best and most particularly advertised its miracles by driving out of spirits and laying on of hands ". The Gospel of John is structured around miraculous "signs": The success of the Apostles according to the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea lay in their miracles: "though laymen in their language", he asserted, "they drew courage from divine, miraculous powers". The conversion of Constantine by

4680-478: The English People . Many Medieval Latin works have been published in the series Patrologia Latina , Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum and Corpus Christianorum . Medieval Latin was separated from Classical Latin around 800 and at this time was no longer considered part of the everyday language. The speaking of Latin became a practice used mostly by the educated high class population. Even then it

4784-708: The Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc. —T.J.] invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning." American Revolutionary War patriot Ethan Allen wrote, "In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue." Robert Ingersoll wrote, "Not 20 people were convinced by

4888-632: The Father and Christ the begotten Son. There are, however, certain esoteric and mystical schools of thought, present in many faiths— Sufis in Islam, Gnostics in Christianity, Advaitan Hindus, Zen Buddhists , as well as several non-specific perspectives developed in new age philosophy—which hold that all humans are in essence divine, or unified with the Divine in a non-trivial way. Such divinity, in these faiths, would express itself naturally if it were not obscured by

4992-475: The Four Evangelists. Jefferson wrote, "The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, [footnote: e.g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in

5096-510: The Germanic tribes, who invaded southern Europe, were also major sources of new words. Germanic leaders became the rulers of parts of the Roman Empire that they conquered, and words from their languages were freely imported into the vocabulary of law. Other more ordinary words were replaced by coinages from Vulgar Latin or Germanic sources because the classical words had fallen into disuse. Latin

5200-730: The Israelites. Parting the Red Sea , and facilitating the Plagues of Egypt are among the most famous. During the first century BCE, a variety of religious movements and splinter groups developed amongst the Jews in Judea . A number of individuals claimed to be miracle workers in the tradition of Moses , Elijah , and Elisha , the Jewish prophets. The Talmud provides some examples of such Jewish miracle workers, one of whom

5304-526: The Latin vocabulary that developed for them became the source of a great many technical words in modern languages. English words like abstract , subject , communicate , matter , probable and their cognates in other European languages generally have the meanings given to them in Medieval Latin, often terms for abstract concepts not available in English. The influence of Vulgar Latin was also apparent in

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5408-544: The Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the Truth, that they might be saved." Revelation 13:13,14 says, "And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on

5512-577: The Son , or Jesus ), and the Holy Spirit . Joseph Smith described a nontrinitarian Godhead, with God the Father and Jesus Christ each having individual physical bodies, and the Holy Spirit as a distinct personage with a spirit body . Smith also introduced the existence of a Heavenly Mother in the King Follett Discourse , but very little is acknowledged or known beyond her existence. Mormons hold

5616-472: The Sufi holy men includes firasa ( clairvoyance ), the ability to disappear from sight, to become completely invisible and practice buruz ( exteriorization ). The holy men reportedly tame wild beasts and traverse long distances in a very short time span. They could also produce food and rain in seasons of drought, heal the sick and help barren women conceive. Descriptions of miracles (Hebrew Ness, נס ) appear in

5720-411: The characteristics described above, showing its period in vocabulary and spelling alone; the features listed are much more prominent in the language of lawyers (e.g. the 11th-century English Domesday Book ), physicians, technical writers and secular chroniclers. However the use of quod to introduce subordinate clauses was especially pervasive and is found at all levels. Medieval Latin had ceased to be

5824-577: The classical Latin practice of generally placing the verb at the end, medieval writers would often follow the conventions of their own native language instead. Whereas Latin had no definite or indefinite articles, medieval writers sometimes used forms of unus as an indefinite article, and forms of ille (reflecting usage in the Romance languages) as a definite article or even quidam (meaning "a certain one/thing" in Classical Latin) as something like an article. Unlike classical Latin, where esse ("to be")

5928-627: The classical forms, testifies to the declining significance of classical education in Gaul. At the same time, good knowledge of Latin and even of Greek was being preserved in monastic culture in Ireland and was brought to England and the European mainland by missionaries in the course of the 6th and 7th centuries, such as Columbanus (543–615), who founded the monastery of Bobbio in Northern Italy. Ireland

6032-466: The conventional workings of the world; from the subtle redressing of minor personal wrongs to such large-scale havoc as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or the biblical Great Flood . Other faiths are even more subtle: the doctrine of karma shared by Buddhism and Hinduism is a divine law similar to divine retribution but without the connotation of punishment: our acts, good or bad, intentional or unintentional, reflect back on us as part of

6136-506: The divinity of the faith has a profound but unknowable plan always unfolding in the world. Unforeseeable, overwhelming, or seemingly unjust events are often thrown on 'the will of the Divine', in deferences like the Muslim inshallah ('as God wills it') and Christian ' God works in mysterious ways '. Often such faiths hold out the possibility of divine retribution as well, where the divinity will unexpectedly bring evil -doers to justice through

6240-629: The earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Revelation 19:20 says, "And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." These passages indicate that signs, wonders, and miracles are not necessarily committed by God. These miracles not committed by God are labeled as false(pseudo) miracles though which could mean that they are deceptive in nature and are not

6344-399: The earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live." Revelation 16:14 says, "For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of

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6448-421: The earth shook, the sun was darkened, beautiful flowers rained from the sky, his severed head flew to the sacred Geumgang mountains, and milk instead of blood sprayed 100 feet in the air from his beheaded corpse. The omen was accepted by the opposing court officials as a manifestation of heaven's approval, and Buddhism was made the state religion in 527 CE. The Honchō Hokke Reigenki (c. 1040) of Japan contains

6552-672: The form that has been used by the Roman Catholic Church (even before the Middle Ages in Antiquity), whereas Medieval Latin refers to all of the (written) forms of Latin used in the Middle Ages. The Romance languages spoken in the Middle Ages were often referred to as Latin , since the Romance languages were all descended from Vulgar Latin itself. Medieval Latin would be replaced by educated humanist Renaissance Latin , otherwise known as Neo-Latin . Medieval Latin had an enlarged vocabulary, which freely borrowed from other sources. It

6656-514: The greater the things that God does are, and the more they are removed from the capacity of nature, the greater the miracle is. Thus, it is more miraculous for the sun to reverse its course than for the sea to be divided. Then, the second degree among miracles is held by those events in which God does something which nature can do, but not in this order. It is a work of nature for an animal to live, to see, and to walk; but for it to live after death, to see after becoming blind, to walk after paralysis of

6760-401: The human realm. As previously noted, divinities are closely related to the transcendent force(s) or power(s) credited to them, so much so that in some cases the powers or forces may themselves be invoked independently. This leads to the second usage of the word divine (and less common usage of divinity ): to refer to the operation of transcendent power in the world. In its most direct form,

6864-465: The incident, attested by Indian academics, was that the material was wicked from the offering bowls by capillary action . In the Quran , a miracle can be defined as a supernatural intervention in the life of human beings. According to this definition, miracles are present "in a threefold sense: in sacred history , in connection with Muhammad himself and in relation to revelation ". The Quran does not use

6968-425: The limbs, this nature cannot do—but God at times does such works miraculously. Even among this degree of miracles a gradation is evident, according as what is done is more removed from the capacity of nature. Now, the third degree of miracles occurs when God does what is usually done by the working of nature, but without the operation of the principles of nature. For example, a person may be cured by divine power from

7072-627: The miracle's authenticity. The process is overseen by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints . The Catholic Church has listed several events as miracles, some of them occurring in modern times. Before a person can be accepted as a saint, they must be posthumously confirmed to have performed two miracles. In the procedure of beatification of Pope John Paul II , who died in 2005, the Vatican announced on 14 January 2011 that Pope Benedict XVI had declared that

7176-577: The monastery of Vivarium near Squillace where many texts from Antiquity were to be preserved. Isidore of Seville ( c.  560 –636) collected all scientific knowledge still available in his time into what might be called the first encyclopedia , the Etymologiae . Gregory of Tours ( c.  538 –594) wrote a lengthy history of the Frankish kings. Gregory came from a Gallo-Roman aristocratic family, and his Latin, which shows many aberrations from

7280-410: The most striking difference is that medieval manuscripts used a wide range of abbreviations by means of superscripts, special characters etc.: for instance the letters "n" and "s" were often omitted and replaced by a diacritical mark above the preceding or following letter. Apart from this, some of the most frequently occurring differences are as follows. Clearly many of these would have been influenced by

7384-444: The natural working of the universe . Philosophical Taoism also proposes a transcendent operant principle—transliterated in English as tao or dao , meaning 'the way'—which is neither an entity nor a being per se, but reflects the natural ongoing process of the world. Modern western mysticism and new age philosophy often use the term 'the Divine' as a noun in this latter sense: a non-specific principle or being that gives rise to

7488-449: The nature was composed of uniform atoms that were "re-created" at every instant by God. Thus, if the soil was to fall, God would have to create and re-create the accident of heaviness for as long as the soil was to fall. For Muslim theologians, the laws of nature were only the customary sequence of apparent causes: customs of God. Sufi biographical literature records claims of miraculous accounts of men and women. The miraculous prowess of

7592-527: The need for long distance correspondence arose. Long distance communication in the vernacular was rare, but Hebrew, Arabic and Greek served a similar purpose among Jews, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox respectively. until 75 BC Old Latin 75 BC – 200 AD Classical Latin 200–700 Late Latin 700–1500 Medieval Latin 1300–1500 Renaissance Latin 1300– present Neo-Latin 1900– present Contemporary Latin Miracles A miracle

7696-414: The notice of contemporaries. Petrarch , writing in the 14th century, complained about this linguistic "decline", which helped fuel his general dissatisfaction with his own era. The corpus of Medieval Latin literature encompasses a wide range of texts, including such diverse works as sermons , hymns , hagiographical texts, travel literature , histories , epics , and lyric poetry . The first half of

7800-401: The operation of transcendent power implies some form of divine intervention . For monotheistic and polytheistic faiths this usually implies the direct action of one god or another on the course of human events. In Greek legend , for instance, it was Poseidon (god of the sea) who raised the storms that blew Odysseus 's craft off course on his return journey, and Japanese tradition holds that

7904-448: The order generally followed in things. Now, there are various degrees and orders of these miracles. Indeed, the highest rank among miracles is held by those events in which something is done by God which nature never could do. For example, that two bodies should be coincident; that the sun reverse its course, or stand still; that the sea open up and offer a way through which people may pass. And even among these an order may be observed. For

8008-578: The pleadings given in court. Even then, those of the church still used Latin more than the rest of the population. At this time, Latin served little purpose to the regular population but was still used regularly in ecclesiastical culture. Latin also served as a lingua franca among the educated elites of Christendom — long distance written communication, while rarer than in Antiquity, took place mostly in Latin. Most literate people wrote Latin and most rich people had access to scribes who knew Latin for use when

8112-482: The prayers and intercessions of a specific saint or saints. There is usually a specific purpose connected to a miracle, e.g. the conversion of a person or persons to the Catholic faith or the construction of a church desired by God. The church says that it tries to be very cautious to approve the validity of putative miracles. The Catholic Church also says that it maintains particularly stringent requirements in validating

8216-520: The prime mover doing only what a perfect being can do, think. Jewish neo- Aristotelian philosophers who are still influential today include Maimonides , Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon , and Gersonides . Directly or indirectly, their views are still prevalent in much of the religious Jewish community. In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus , the philosopher Spinoza claims that miracles are merely lawlike events of whose causes we are ignorant. We should not treat them as having no cause or as having

8320-400: The punishment of execution, for what would quickly be seen as a forgery. Ichadon prophesied to the king that at his execution a wonderful miracle would convince the opposing court faction of Buddhism's power. Ichadon's scheme went as planned, and the opposing officials took the bait. According to legend when Ichadon was executed on the 15th day of the 9th month in 527, his prophecy was fulfilled;

8424-490: The rate of about one per month. By his definition, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace. A miracle is a phenomenon not explained by known laws of nature . The criteria for classifying an event as a miracle vary. Often a religious text , such as the Bible or Quran , states that a miracle occurred, and believers may accept this as fact. The Aristotelian view of God has God as pure actuality and considers him as

8528-452: The recovery of Marie Simon-Pierre from Parkinson's disease was a miracle. Among the more notable miracles approved by the church are several Eucharistic miracles wherein the sacramental species of bread and wine attain the accidents of human flesh and blood. Prominent examples are the Miracle of Lanciano and of Santarém . According to 17th century documents, a young Spanish man's leg

8632-402: The result is that of several who see an effect at the same time, some are moved to admiring astonishment, while others are not. For instance, the astronomer is not astonished when he sees an eclipse of the sun, for he knows its cause, but the person who is ignorant of this science must be amazed, for he ignores the cause. And so, a certain event is wondrous to one person, but not so to another. So,

8736-461: The same as the true miracles committed by God. In early Christianity miracles were the most often attested motivations for conversions of pagans ; pagan Romans took the existence of miracles for granted; Christian texts reporting them offered miracles as divine proof of the Christian God's unique claim to authority, relegating all other gods to the lower status of daimones : "of all worships,

8840-406: The signs (particularly those of creation). To defend the possibility of miracles and God's omnipotence against the encroachment of the independent secondary causes, some medieval Muslim theologians such as Al-Ghazali rejected the idea of cause and effect in essence, but accepted it as something that facilitates humankind's investigation and comprehension of natural processes. They argued that

8944-455: The sky, and appear to plummet towards Earth, radiating great heat in the process. After the ten-minute event, the ground and the people's clothing, which had been drenched by a previous rainstorm, were both dry. Velankanni (Mary) can be traced to the mid-16th century and is attributed to three miracles: the apparition of Mary and the Christ Child to a slumbering shepherd boy, the curing of

9048-542: The social and physical worlds we live in; it needs to be brought to the fore through appropriate spiritual practices . In the New Testament the Greek word θεῖον ( theion ) in the Douay Version , is translated as "divinity". Examples are below: The word translated as either "deity", "Godhead", or "divinity" in the Greek New Testament is also the Greek word θεότητος ( theotētos ), and the one verse that contains it

9152-468: The spelling, and indeed pronunciation, of the vernacular language, and thus varied between different European countries. These orthographical differences were often due to changes in pronunciation or, as in the previous example, morphology, which authors reflected in their writing. By the 16th century, Erasmus complained that speakers from different countries were unable to understand each other's form of Latin. The gradual changes in Latin did not escape

9256-705: The spirit. A key example is the revelation of Krishna to Arjuna , wherein Krishna persuades Arjuna to rejoin the battle against his cousins by briefly and miraculously giving Arjuna the power to see the true scope of the Universe, and its sustainment within Krishna, which requires divine vision. This is a typical situation in Hindu mythology wherein "wondrous acts are performed for the purpose of bringing spiritual liberation to those who witness or read about them." Hindu sages have criticized both expectation and reliance on miracles as cheats, situations where people have sought to earn

9360-498: The state religion. However, officials in his court opposed him. In the fourteenth year of his reign, Beopheung's "Grand Secretary", Ichadon , devised a strategy to overcome court opposition. Ichadon schemed with the king, convincing him to make a proclamation granting Buddhism official state sanction using the royal seal. Ichadon told the king to deny having made such a proclamation when the opposing officials received it and demanded an explanation. Instead, Ichadon would confess and accept

9464-567: The tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe." Thomas Jefferson , principal author of the Declaration of Independence of the United States , edited a version of the Bible in which he removed sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by

9568-554: The technical Arabic word for miracle ( Muʿd̲j̲iza ) literally meaning "that by means of which [the Prophet] confounds, overwhelms, his opponents". It rather uses the term 'Ayah' (literally meaning sign). The term Ayah is used in the Quran in the above-mentioned threefold sense: it refers to the "verses" of the Quran (believed to be the divine speech in human language ; presented by Muhammad as his chief miracle); as well as to miracles of it and

9672-453: The terms demon and demonic are used in monotheistic faiths as antonyms to divine , they are in fact derived from the Greek word daimón (δαίμων), which itself translates as divinity . There are three distinct usages of divinity and divine in religious discourse : In monotheistic faiths, the word divinity is often used to refer to the singular God central to that faith. Often

9776-464: The third usage, extensions of divinity and divine power are credited to living, mortal individuals. Political leaders are known to have claimed actual divinity in certain early societies—the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs being the premier case—taking a role as objects of worship and being credited with superhuman status and powers. More commonly, and more pertinent to recent history, leaders merely claim some form of divine mandate , suggesting that their rule

9880-548: The use of medieval Latin among the learned elites of Christendom may have played a role in the spread of those features. In every age from the late 8th century onwards, there were learned writers (especially within the Church) who were familiar enough with classical syntax to be aware that these forms and usages were "wrong" and resisted their use. Thus the Latin of a theologian like St Thomas Aquinas or of an erudite clerical historian such as William of Tyre tends to avoid most of

9984-550: The word takes the definite article and is capitalized— "the Divinity" —as though it were a proper name or definitive honorific. Divine —capitalized—may be used as an adjective to refer to the manifestations of such a Divinity or its powers: e.g. "basking in the Divine presence..." The terms divinity and divine —uncapitalized, and lacking the definite article—are sometimes used to denote 'god(s) or certain other beings and entities which fall short of absolute Godhood but lie outside

10088-469: The world, and acts as the source or wellspring of life . In these latter cases, the faiths do not promote deference, as happens in monotheisms; rather each suggests a path of action that will bring the practitioner into conformance with the divine law: ahimsa —'no harm'—for Buddhist and Hindu faiths; de or te —'virtuous action'—in Taoism; and any of numerous practices of peace and love in new age thinking. In

10192-419: Was also spread to areas such as Ireland and Germany , where Romance languages were not spoken, and which had never known Roman rule. Works written in those lands where Latin was a learned language, having no relation to the local vernacular, also influenced the vocabulary and syntax of Medieval Latin. Since subjects like science and philosophy, including Rhetoric and Ethics , were communicated in Latin,

10296-489: Was also the birthplace of a strange poetic style known as Hisperic Latin . Other important Insular authors include the historian Gildas ( c.  500  – c.  570 ) and the poet Aldhelm ( c.  640 –709). Benedict Biscop ( c.  628 –690) founded the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow and furnished it with books which he had taken home from a journey to Rome and which were later used by Bede ( c.  672 –735) to write his Ecclesiastical History of

10400-460: Was heavily influenced by the language of the Vulgate , which contained many peculiarities alien to Classical Latin that resulted from a more or less direct translation from Greek and Hebrew ; the peculiarities mirrored the original not only in its vocabulary but also in its grammar and syntax. Greek provided much of the technical vocabulary of Christianity . The various Germanic languages spoken by

10504-470: Was miraculously restored to him in 1640 after having been amputated two and a half years earlier. Another miracle approved by the church is the Miracle of the Sun , which is said to have occurred near Fátima, Portugal on October 13, 1917. According to legend, between 70,000 and 100,000 people, who were gathered at a cove near Fátima, witnessed the sunlight dim and change colors, and the Sun spin, dance about in

10608-593: Was no single form of "Medieval Latin". Every Latin author in the medieval period spoke Latin as a second language, with varying degrees of fluency and syntax. Grammar and vocabulary, however, were often influenced by an author's native language. This was especially true beginning around the 12th century, after which the language became increasingly adulterated: late Medieval Latin documents written by French speakers tend to show similarities to medieval French grammar and vocabulary; those written by Germans tend to show similarities to German, etc. For instance, rather than following

10712-472: Was not frequently used in casual conversation. An example of these men includes the churchmen who could read Latin, but could not effectively speak it. Latin's use in universities was structured in lectures and debates, however, it was highly recommended that students use it in conversation. This practice was kept up only due to rules. One of Latin's purposes, writing, was still in practice; the main uses being charters for property transactions and to keep track of

10816-516: Was the only auxiliary verb, Medieval Latin writers might use habere ("to have") as an auxiliary, similar to constructions in Germanic and Romance languages. The accusative and infinitive construction in classical Latin was often replaced by a subordinate clause introduced by quod or quia . This is almost identical, for example, to the use of que in similar constructions in French. Many of these developments are similar to Standard Average European and

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