In John Duns Scotus in his Ordinatio argued that miracles testify to the truth of the Christian faith in these words:
the clearness and evidence of miracles, the thing is plain thus: God cannot be a false witness; but God himself, when invoked by a preacher of the Scripture to show that its doctrine was true, performed some work proper to himself, and thereby bore witness that what he preached was true. There is a confirmation from Richard [of St. Victor] in On the Trinity I ch.2: “Lord, if it is an error, we have been by you deceived, for your deeds have been confirmed by signs so great that they can only have been done by you.”
Scotus as such believes that miracles are a work "proper" to God, and miracles as such provide a unique form of divine testimony to an oracle or prophet of a divine message. It isn't explicit what "proper" means, but later on we can attempt to develop and explicate his argument.
Duns Scotus then addresses an objection to this logical link between miracles and authentication of the theological message. If the miracles of Jesus authenticated his gospel, would the miracles of the devil or Antichrist also authenticate their message? In his own words:
“it be said that miracles... do not testify to the truth, because even Antichrist will perform miracles...”
To this objection Duns Scotus answers:
it can be said that if anyone, after being summoned as a witness, should permit some customary sign of bearing witness to be adduced and, although present, should not contradict it, such silence does not cohere with perfect truthfulness; but a miracle is such a sign of God as witness; therefore if he should permit miracles to be performed by demons and not contradict them, namely by declaring that they are not his testimonies, he does not seem to be perfectly truthful, which is impossible. And hereby is the response to what is said of Antichrist, because God predicted that the miracles to be done were not testimonies of the truth, as is clear in Matthew 24.24 and 2 Thessalonians 2.8-9.
Personally I think this is a brilliant answer based on a courtroom analogy, but I would like to develop and make this argument tighter and to smooth out what I think are some logical sequencing problems.
Scotus argues that miracles are a unique sign of God as a witness, but if God does not answer or contradict a malicious miraculous testimony in His name, He cannot be said to be "perfectly truthful". The concept appealed to here is what is known as the "law of adverse inferences". The law of adverse inferences is the idea that if the accused to a crime refuses to answer some question or explain himself, the judge may direct the jury to draw whatever "adverse inferences" they may deem fit from the accused's silence or refusal to answer. Very few common law jurisdictions have such a law of evidence because of its obvious effects on the right to silence. Whereas everyone obviously agrees that everyone has the right to silence in the sense that nobody should be punished nor tortured for refusing to answer questions, however in America and in many other common law jurisdictions the right to silence is so absolute that neither the judge nor the lawyers can even comment or draw any attention to the accused silence or refusal to answer any questions at any point from arrest to trial. (During the Rittenhouse trial when the prosecutor made even a causal remark that Rittenhouse didn't mention something when he was questioned by the police, the cookie judge roasted his ass from the bench.)
With this concept we are now in a position to develop Scotus's argument. Suppose a wonder worker were to claim to bear a message from the Lord God, but is in fact a deceiver, and invoking the name of God, he calls upon God to bear witness to his message and confirms this by a miracle. Now God in this position could be charge with lying and deceit if He allows a deceiver to invoke His name to confirm a false message. If the audience to the miracle were to pray, are you deceiving us with a false message, and if God remains silent and does not answer the miracle of the deceiver, we can draw "adverse inferences" against God for remaining silent in the face of being accused of deceit.
However, as Scotus points out, this is impossible for God who is perfectly truthful himself. So if a deceiver invokes the name of God to confirm a false message by miracle, God cannot remain silent and should answer that miracle by another miracle which unambiguously shows who's the true prophet, e.g. Moses's snake eating the magician's snake, Elijah's calling fire down from heaven to burn up Baal's sacrifices. On the other hand, if there's no miraculous counter, then we can infer that the message is truly from God.
Let's formulate a complete argument for Jesus's miracles contra the miracles of the Antichrist this way.
(1) Miracles are a work proper to God, that is, a unique divine witness to a prophetic message.
(2) Jesus claims that God has divinely revealed that all miracles which contradicts His message are all false, e.g. miracles by the devil and the Antichrist.
(3) If Jesus is lying through his teeth and God has other messages and revelations which contradicts Jesus's message, then God cannot allow Jesus's message to be miraculously confirmed because that would effectively be His own confirmation that these other messages are false.
(4) Thus, if Jesus is lying through his teeth, and God wants to prevent Jesus's message from being confirmed, he has to either (a) prevent Jesus from performing any miracles to confirm the message or (b) perform a counter miracle to disprove Jesus's message.
(5) Jesus, "by the finger of God", performs miracles to confirm his message.
(6) Thus (4a) avenue for preventing the confirmation of Jesus's message is negated.
(7) If Jesus is lying, God must act according to (4b) because to remain silent while his own witness is being invoked in deceit would fall foul of the law of adverse inferences, which would make God guilty of deceit.
(8) However God does remain silent after Jesus's miracles were confirmed.
Conclusion:
The supposition of (3) is false, Jesus is not lying through his teeth.
And Corollary from (2): All other miracles performed in aid of messages "anti" to the Christ are false.
I think this is a tighter argument and more rigorous version of Scotus's argument, but we still have to acknowledge the original genius of Scotus for the analogy.
However, what Duns Scotus here implies is that the miracles of the Antichrist do not authenticate his theological truth claims because it contradicts Jesus's own message which has been authenticated before that of the antichrist. Thus, there is a theological content test for the authenticity of miracles based on chronological priority, the message which has been confirmed prior to the latest one has priority and negates all subsequent miracles which negates the prior message. This just goes back to the Deuteronomic 13 principle that:
If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let’s follow other gods (whom you have not known) and let’s serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
Thus, even if the prophet performs a true sign or genuine miracle, but if it contradicts the prior message given by Moses to lead people away from God's commandments, they are not to be listened to. Thus, majority Christians denominations have availed themselves of this principle to reject the miracles of their rivals, Augustine rejected the miracles of the Donatist as it is contrary to the theological truth revealed prior to them, when the Roman Catholics tried to argue that Protestants had no miracles authenticating their doctrines, John Calvin's famous answer was that their doctrine is authenticated by apostolic miracles. And when the Jansenist referred to their miracles around Saint-Médard as authenticating their position, the Jesuit replied that the apostolic miracles had already established the Roman magisterium's as the final authority on interpreting miracles and subsequent miracles cannot contradict it.
Any Christian denomination which follows the trajectory of the Old Testament approach to miracles would necessary subscribe to some sort of chronological priority of miracles.
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