The Types of Miracles and the Possibilty of Demonic Miracles – Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P.
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
Fr. Anselm Ramelow explains how, in a Thomistic framework, miracles are graded by how they surpass nature and why only God can perform the highest-level miracles of creation and resurrection, while finite spirits—including demons—can produce lesser “signs” that must be carefully discerned.
This lecture was given on April 5th, 2025, at St. Albert's Priory.
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About the Speakers:
Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P., a native of Germany, teaches philosophy at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, where he is also currently the chair of the philosophy department. He is also a member of the Core Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and the Academy of Catholic Theology. He obtained his doctorate under Robert Spaemann in Munich on Leibniz and the Spanish Jesuits (Gott, Freiheit, Weltenwahl, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997) and did theological work on George Lindbeck and the question of a Thomist philosophy and theology of language (Beyond Modernism? - George Lindbeck and the Linguistic Turn in Theology, Neuried: Ars Una 2005). Other works include Thomas Aquinas: De veritate Q. 21-24; Translation and Commentary (Hamburg: Meiner, 2013) and God: Reason and Reality (Basic Philosophical Concepts) (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 2014), as editor and contributor. Articles appeared in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Nova et Vetera, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly and Angelicum. Areas of research and teaching include Free Will, the History of Philosophy and Philosophical Aesthetics. He has worked on a philosophical approach to Miracles and other topics of the philosophy of religion, and more recently the philosophy of technology.
Keywords: Aquinas On Miracles, Demonic Signs And Wonders, Discernment Of Spirits, Finite Spiritual Causes, Levels Of Miracles, Natural Law And Suspension, Omnipotence And Creation, Possibility Of Demonic Miracles, Thomistic Philosophy Of Miracles
Transcript
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| 0:26.0 | You can see that one can get to the point where one says, |
| 0:30.4 | here is an effect for which we don't have an explanation and for which no |
| 0:36.9 | natural, physical, or other kind of inner |
| 0:40.5 | world the explanation can be found. |
| 0:43.2 | Which is also, in I mentioned Lourde earlier, Lourde, they have a medical bureau that looks |
| 0:48.9 | into these cases and a lot of rules about that. |
| 0:52.1 | There are doctors there that are atheists and there need to be atheists, |
| 0:55.5 | so they don't want to be any outcome prejudice. |
| 0:59.5 | They're not paid for that and so forth. |
| 1:02.0 | And nevertheless, so they are willing to say, |
| 1:04.2 | here's something that cannot be explained anymore. |
| 1:07.0 | They still don't become Catholic. |
| 1:08.9 | Apparently, faith is still a gift. |
| 1:11.6 | God uses miracles as that miracles as a megaphone to shout at you, but you can still sort of say, |
| 1:17.6 | no, I'm rather not, or something like that. |
| 1:21.6 | But it doesn't mean that they're not willing to acknowledge that. |
| 1:24.6 | But once you're at that point, you're not done yet. And so the, |
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