Nature and Miracles

The great fourth century African theologian, St. Augustine said, “Nature is what [God] does.”
By this St. Augustine didn’t mean that nature is the same as God (pantheism), for, as he also argued, God operates outside of space and time. There is also no room within a robust Biblical theism for the Deistic notion that God started the world up, and then left it to run on its own, completely independently. Descriptions of God’s continuous care for creation can be seen throughout Biblical scripture:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. (Matthew 10:29,30)

God sustains the Universe

As Christian thinkers throughout the Middle Ages wrestled with the questions of miracles and God’s action in the world, the following ideas emerged: The regular behaviour of nature can be viewed as the “customs of the creator” as it were. If God were to stop sustaining all things by his powerful word, the world would stop existing.

Miracles

Of course there are also descriptions of events in the Bible that defy description in terms of current science. These are often called miracles. A Christian would say miracles are by definition times when, for divine purposes, God does not act in the way He usually does when sustaining the universe. Perhaps the most significant for Christians would be the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If anything, science has strengthened the case for this not occurring through the ordinary actions of God that we describe with science.