Why have there not been any miracles since the New Testament?

Answer 1

There is a difficulty in announcing the performance of a miracle so close in time and place that people can look at the evidence, if any, for that miracle. The spread of Christianity was always to be assisted by the report of miracles far away or long ago. We find this in Acts of the Apostles, which attributes great miracles to both Peter and Paul, yet Paul himself never mentions his performance of these miracles. Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) quotes as a typical example in the post-apostolic era that Bernard of Clairvaux recorded so many miracles of his friend St. Malachi, but never took any notice of his own which, in their turn, are carefully related by his companions and disciples. He doubts whether in the long series of ecclesiastical history, there exists a single instance of a saint asserting that he himself possessed the gift of miracles.

Gibbon says that in the early post-apostolic era the resurrection of the dead was a very far from uncommon event according to Christian apologists. A noble Grecian promised Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, that, if he could be gratified with the sight of a single person who had been actually raised from the dead, he would immediately embrace the Christian religion. It is somewhat remarkable that the prelate of the first eastern church, however anxious for the conversion of his friend, thought proper to decline this fair and reasonable challenge.

Miracles continue to happen with sufficient regularity that the Catholic Church is kept busy with the beatification and canonisation of the saints thought to have been responsible for them. These miracles are now more subtle than the miracles of New Testament times and need teams of priests and Catholic doctors to verify them. In one recent case a nun, thought to have been cured by miraculous intercession, suffered a relapse. The Church was unworried, because it said that there were plenty more miracles that could be used as evidence of sainthood.