The specific promise in Acts 1:8 of forthcoming "power" is addressed to the Eleven Apostles. In this verse, Jesus directly relates that power to the coming of the Spirit, an event which the very next chapter of Acts records. However, divine witnessing power is not limited to the Apostles, as Acts 4:31 makes plain with its report not only that the whole church experienced a house-shaking visitation of God, but also by its express statement that all the gathered believers were filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak the word of God with boldness.
The Greek word translated "miracles," you might remember, signifies acts of power. "Signs" may refer to the same occurrences, with emphasis on the divine significance of the event. I know of absolutely nothing in the Bible which suggests that God has stopped doing powerful acts ("miracles") which carry spiritual significance to those who perceive them rightly ("signs").
Clearly Acts 2, Mark 16:20 and Hebrews 2:4 affirm that God worked powerfully through the Apostles. However, they do not limit God's powerful ("miracle-") working to them. Nor do these passages say that God stopped exercising his "sign-ificant" power when the Apostles had all died. Church history is replete with such occurrences until the period of the secularization, institutionalization and sacramentalization of the Church in the fifth century. Credible reports of such mighty acts of God ("miracles" and "signs") abound today, for those who have not decided beforehand that such do not exist.
* * *
It should not surprise us that the book called "Acts of the Apostles" reports the acts of the Apostles (including apostle-extraordinaire Paul) and those with whom they had first-hand contact. However, Luke suggests a somewhat deeper focus in his opening verse. His first treatise, he says (The Gospel of Luke) told the things Jesus "began" to do and to teach. This second volume (Acts), Luke implies, will recite what Jesus continued to do and to teach -- through his Spirit -- following his own ascension into heaven (Acts 1:1).
I see no reason to limit that divine activity to texts which use the word dynamis. God's empowerment of "miraculous acts" on the earth is not limited to the application of Jesus' specific promise of "power" in Acts 1:8. Nor does it follow that God works "miracles" only through the individuals Jesus addressed there, as the New Testament elsewhere makes plain.
Even using the word dynamis as a guide, the Spirit directly bestows the gift of effecting "works of powers" or "miracles," without human intervention or mediation (1 Cor. 12:10-11). God "provides with the Spirit and works miracles among you" based on "hearing with faith" (Gal. 3:5). Paul uses the same word dynamis ("power") for God's working among Christians, with no regard for our artificial distinction between "miraculous" and "non-miraculous" deeds of divine power (Eph. 1:19; 3:16; Col. 1:11). The author of Hebrews also believed that her/his readers had "tasted the 'powers' dynamis of the Age to Come (Heb. 6:5).
Actually, the choice is not between Scripture and the testimony of the church fathers, but between 19th and 20th century interpretations of Scripture and the testimony of the church fathers. The church fathers I mentioned all believed that God's miraculous activities among them were completely according to the Scriptures. The notion was not yet invented that God had retired from the miracle business.
The same God who gave the Scriptures is the one at work among his people through the centuries and to this present time. According to the New Testament, God's ongoing activity in the world actually helps us rightly interpret the Scriptures (John 5:39-40; Acts 15:5-21). The person who denies that God does miracles today because she or has never seen one is relying on experience rather than Scripture, and is seeking to walk by "sight" and not by "faith."
* * *
It makes sense that we need no more Scripture -- although if one took your point absolutely, we should not need the New Testament Scriptures either, since the Scriptures of which Paul spoke and which Timothy had learned from infancy were those of the Old Testament. Many of the New Testament texts were not yet written when Paul penned 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
Second Peter 1:3 speaks broadly of God's work and gifts of all sorts, and it does not even mention the Scriptures. Hebrews 1:1-2 does not say that God will never speak again in any form (Hebrews is not even the New Testament's final book). It rather assures Jewish-believer readers that the same God who spoke to their ancestors -- the God whom they assumed had been forever silenced with the writing of Malachi -- has indeed spoken an even greater word, this time through his Son.
To say that God continues to do miracles and to give spiritual gifts, all according to his sovereign will, is not to say that we have a new Christ, a new gospel, or any new Scripture. It just means that God is still alive and well and active on the earth. The same post-apostolic church which selected a "canon" of New Testament Scripture believed that God was still speaking, gifting and working miracles, and that is part of the reason why they needed a "measuring stick" or "standard" along which to lay new messages which purported to come from God.
Please note that I do not endorse all that goes on in the name of miracles and gifts. There are abuses, frauds, counterfeits and extremes. I suspect that the genuine supernatural works and gifts usually occur in small gatherings or local congregations, often on the mission field, out of the limelight and without publicity or fanfare. The cause of Christ has frequently suffered because of flamboyant characters on television and in traveling "miracle shows." But the counterfeit should not discredit the genuine. Indeed, if God were not genuinely moving in power today, the devil would have nothing to imitate or to fake.
* * *
Among many Fathers who testify to Christian ministry in the name of Jesus Christ, through which individuals were healed of various diseases or were released from demonic oppression, are the following.
Tertullian, "To Scapula," chap. 4, written between A.D. 196-212 -- "Heaven knows how many distinguished men, to say nothing of common people, have been cured either of devils or of their sicknesses." [Specific examples follow, of persons named and known to his readers.]
Origen (185-254), "Against Celsus," chapters 2, 6, 24 -- "[W]e can clearly show a countless multitude of Greeks and Barbarians who acknowledge the existence of Jesus. And some give evidence of their having received through this faith a marvellous power by the cures which they perform, invoking no other name . . . than that of the God of all things, and of Jesus . . . . For by these means we too have seen many persons freed from grievous calamities, and from distractions of mind, and madness, and countless other ills, which could be cured neither by men nor devils" (chap. 24).
Athanasius (296-373), "Vita S. Antoni, chapters 83-84 -- "[W]e ought not to doubt whether such marvels were wrought by the hand of a man. For it is . . . Jesus himself who saith to His disciples and to all who believe on Him, 'Heal the sick, cast out demons; freely ye have received, freely give.' Antony, at any rate, healed not by commanding, but by prayer and speaking the name of Christ. So that it was clear to all that it was not he himself who worked, but the Lord who showed mercy by his means and healed the sufferers" (chap. 83-84).
* * *
We continue our look at some of many Church Fathers who testify to Christian ministry in the name of Jesus Christ, through which individuals were healed of various diseases or were released from demonic oppression, as follows.
Lactantius (died A.D. 320), "The Epitome of the Divine Institutions," chap. 51 -- "And as He Himself before His passion put to confusion demons by His word and command, so now, by the name and sign of the same passion, unclean spirits, having insinuated themselves into the bodies of men, are driven out, when racked and tormented, and confessing themselves to be demons, they yield themselves to God, who harasses them."
Augustine, "The City of God," Book 22, chap. 8 -- "It is sometimes objected that the miracles, which Christians claim to have occurred, no longer happen. One answer might be that they are no longer needed as they once were to help an unbelieving world to believe. . . . The truth is that even today miracles are being wrought in the name of Christ . . . .
The fact that the canon of our Scriptures is definitely closed brings it about that the original miracles are everywhere repeated and are fixed in people's memory, whereas contemporary miracles . . . seldom become known. [Augustine then cites specific examples, naming individuals involved.] . . . It is a simple fact that, that there is no lack of miracles even in our day. And the God who works the miracles we read of in the Scripture uses any means and manner He chooses. The only trouble is that these modern miracles are not so well known as the earlier ones . . . .
______________________
Two well-written, contemporary books by responsible evangelical scholars on the topic of present-day spiritual gifts and miracles are Fire in the Fireplace, by Charles E. Hummel (InterVarsity Press, 1993); and Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, by Jack Deere (Zondervan, 1993). The second contains a direct, scriptural refutation of the view that signs, miracles and gifts of the Spirit were only for the Apostles and their immediate acquaintances. I heartily recommend both books to serious inquirers.
For more on miracles, click here.