[It] is sufficiently agreed [that] the efficient cause of miracles, and of all [things] which happen above nature, is God — but [as] the primary and principal [cause], which meanwhile uses certain secondary causes and instruments for effects of this kind. Certainly St. Augustine (bk. 21 On the City [of God] ch. 6 & 8) notes, from Aeneid 4, [that] it was thought by the Ethnics [pagans] that the Magi could, “by songs [spells], stop the water in rivers, and turn the stars back.” What, then, [is] the secondary [cause], and [what the one] which — as [it were] an instrument—
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—[what, then, is the secondary cause, and what the one which — as an] instrument — the Lord deigned to use in splitting and restraining that river, is inquired. Some think [that] the priests’ feet themselves are this efficient cause — to which God gave that power, so that by their contact they drove the waters this way and that, and made some stand still, others flow away. So seems to think [the one] who wrote the abridged Life of St. Bridget, as he calls it. For, describing how the holy Catherine, daughter of that same saint, once checked the flooding Tiber at Rome, [he] speaks thus: “A wonderful thing — an ancient miracle is renewed. In Joshua’s time the Jordan was turned backward; and at the entering of the holy virgin into the water, power went out from her, and, restraining the force of the waters, compelled the flooding river to return with all speed into its channel.” For just as [he] compares St. Catherine with the priests entering the river, so he signifies [that] power went out from them, just as [it] went out from her. But what [is] this “power,” other than efficiency? For [there] is an allusion to that [saying] about CHRIST the Lord (Luke 6 v. 19): “Power went out from him, and healed all.” And [it] is confirmed: 1. For just as God, who willed the thing, gave a natural power to some [agent], so he can also give a supernatural [power]. 2. [There] was some efficiency in the smoke of the [fish’s] liver for expelling the demon, as [is] proved [on] Tobit ch. 8 (quest. 2 & 3). Therefore [there] was also some [efficiency] in the priests’ feet for stopping the Jordan. But to other authors the efficient cause seems [to be] an Angel — as [to] Abulensis (quest. 19 & 33), [to] Cajetan (on Exod. 14), [and to] Pererius nearly in the same place (disp. 1, fol. 832). For although those later [authors] treat of the division of the Red Sea, yet the reasoning about the divided Jordan is equal — especially since the same Pererius (disp. 5) diligently gathers the differences of both miracles, and establishes nothing in this efficient cause. But to me, first, a distinction of a twofold efficient cause seems [worth] observing. For one acts physically; the other morally — namely, that which does not exert a force upon some physical effect, but is only a moral, as it were, sign, which being posited, some other cause physically produces that effect (as the followers of Scotus make plain in the disputation on the efficiency of the Sacraments). Next, the priests’ feet, while they touched the water, I reckon were the efficient cause — not physical, but moral. For that they effected something toward that miracle can scarcely be doubted, since the Lord so expressly requires them before it, saying (v. 13): “And when the Priests shall have set the soles of their feet in the waters of the Jordan, the waters which are lower shall run down, and shall fail,” etc. Nor was that contact a mere disposition of the waters, nor a pure and simple causa sine qua non — and [even] if it were, it could still be recalled to the notion of a moral efficient cause. But that [it] was not a physical cause is gathered from this: 1. that the text insinuates no efficiency of this kind. 2. Moses touched the Red Sea with his rod; and yet no one, that I know of, attributes physical efficiency to that rod — therefore neither to the priestly feet, even if [one] thinks something [is] to be attributed to them at once. 3. Because [it] would be either a natural power, or supernatural, or mixed. Not natural. For what power [is there] of those feet against so [great a mass of waters]?—
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—[against so] great a mass of waters? [For] even if God had not supernaturally concurred, not the priests’ feet only, but they themselves entirely, and all the Israelites, would have been submerged in that river — if indeed they had wished to cross it on foot. Not supernatural. For although this could have been divinely put into them, [that it] was nevertheless not done we gather from this — that that [supernatural] manner of effecting is the greatest and noblest, and not easily to be attributed to anyone, unless either the text be author to us, or some notable reason. Not mixed, for the same cause. And therefore only a moral efficiency is to be ascribed to these footsteps of the priests. And of this [is] to be understood that exclamation of mine in the Joshuan booklet (num. 43): “O the wondrous power of the priestly feet! O the efficiency of the sacred contact!” Thirdly, finally, I reckon [that] one or more Angels cut through the middle of the Jordan, and held back the upper waters by a certain, as it were, bridle. For something of this kind can be done by the merely natural power of Angels — both good and evil. But God, for effects of this kind, [uses], as he is wont (as [was] also said above), secondary causes. But here [there] ought to be no thought of evil spirits. For good and marvellous works of this kind the Lord accomplishes by the ministry of good ministers. For not even any powerful [man], if he wishes to bestow something useful, pleasing, splendid, and marvellous on certain [people], and could use for that purpose honourable and splendid ministers — without any trouble and inconvenience of his own, or of the ministers themselves — would rather employ fugitives, and sordid little slaves, laden with a thousand chains and a thousand crosses [tortures] for [their] crimes and wickedness. And that the Red Sea was once divided by Angels is the received opinion, which Lactantius, so many ages ago, expounded in these words too: “In the leading-out” (of the Israelites from Egypt) “God showed the power of his majesty. For he carried the people across through the midst of the Red Sea, an Angel going before, and cleaving the water, that the people might go dry-shod.” He says [there was] a single Angel. And indeed, for bridling the Jordan, one was much more [than] enough. And perhaps it was St. Michael — about whom [more] below, ch. 5; since about him a most beautiful history too is related by [Symeon] Metaphrastes and Surius (Sept. 29): how [he] compressed two rivers — [which had been] diverted by the infidels against St. Archippus and the temple of St. Michael himself, and [which,] the barriers having been moved, were now let loose — and bade [them] thereafter be buried in a chasm of the earth.
But to those [arguments] by which the former opinion was being confirmed, the answer [is] very easy. For to the first, [it] is granted [that] God can give this efficiency to the priestly feet. But whether he gave [it] is the question; and this is denied, because [there] is no reason for asserting so great a thing. To the second: the text in Tobit clearly gives some efficiency to that liver — and, in a way, [a] natural [one], as [was] shown there. But here the text speaks so [as] to establish no efficiency of this kind, but only a certain, as it were, sign — which being perceived, the Jordan would at once stop its course. For those words effect nothing more (v. 13): “When the priests shall have set the soles of their feet”; and v. 15: “they having entered the Jordan, and their feet being dipped in part of the water.” But this too is to be gathered from these [things]: since the degrees of miracles are various, this [one] is not in the highest degree — because it does not surpass the whole order of natural powers, but only [surpasses] natural—
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—[but only the order] of natural powers, which are in this corporeal world, and inhere in corporeal things. The author of On the Marvels of Sacred Scripture (bk. 2 ch. 1), having said [that] the river Gyndes of the Babylonians was diverted elsewhere by Cyrus, and other [rivers] elsewhere by others (as will be noted below, ch. 4 p. 3 quest. 4), [says]: “What men, [being] as it were earthly, frequently do out of earthly gross matter, how could the Angels then — by whose offices all these marvels are accomplished — not do through the air? Since it is the natural work and proper office of the air to retain the waters in the clouds, and, as the learned and unlearned alike know, [the air] retains [them] by its daily administration. So then, at God’s command, [the air] prohibited the course of the river, that through its streams the ark of God and the priests might cross.”