Question Three of Chapter Seven of the Third Decade
Whether demons can perform miracles
It is asked whether demons can perform miracles.
To this it first appears that one must respond affirmatively. For Augustine says in the book Eighty-Three Questions: “Very often, through magical arts and those of demons, miracles are performed similar to those performed through the servants of God,” as is evident from Valerius Maximus, Book I, under the heading On Miracles.
Likewise, the raising of the dead is a miracle. But the devil performed the raising of Samuel through the medium of the pythoness, as is evident in 1 Kings 28.
It is answered that, if a miracle is taken properly, insofar as it is something arduous and unusual, beyond the faculty of the whole of created nature and appearing beyond the expectation of the one who wonders, as Augustine says, demons cannot perform miracles in this sense, nor can any creature, but God alone.
But if a miracle is taken commonly for that which exceeds human faculty and consideration, demons can in this sense perform miracles. These would more truly be called marvels, insofar as human beings marvel at the things thus done because they exceed their faculty and cognition.
Although the works of demons which appear to us to be miracles do not attain to the true account of a miracle, they are nevertheless sometimes true things. Thus Pharaoh’s magicians, through the power of demons, made true serpents and frogs; and fire fell from heaven upon Job’s household and flocks, and so forth. These were works of Satan and were not phantasms, as Augustine says in Book XX of The City of God.
To the first argument it is said that those things are properly called marvels and not miracles.
To the second it is said that the pythoness did not see Samuel, but the devil in the appearance and likeness of Samuel, whom the pythoness believed to be Samuel. Therefore the raising was not true but phantastic.
These things are from Thomas, First Part, question 110, and Johannes de Turrecremata, cause 25, question 3, chapter Quodam loco.