a wonder: a startling, awe-inducing act that serves as visible proof God is at work, backing a message or messenger (or, when counterfeited, imitating that proof)
In the New Testament this word never stands on its own. All sixteen times it appears in the plural and is bound to the word for "sign" (σημεῖον), making the fixed phrase "signs and wonders." It is a loanword from the Greek Old Testament, where it had become the standard word for the mighty acts God performed to rescue Israel from Egypt. Every New Testament use leans on that rescue story: the plagues, the parting sea, and the covenant memory built on them.
Behind it lies an older, heavier Greek word for a frightening portent or an unnatural marvel, the kind of thing that made people shudder as a warning from the gods. The biblical tradition tamed that word and turned it toward God's saving power, yet the old edge of awe and dread never fully disappears. That is why the same word can name the healings worked through the apostles and the deceiving marvels of a false prophet.
The decisive lesson the New Testament draws is that a wonder is not self-authenticating. The book of Deuteronomy already warned that a false prophet's sign might actually come true, so the marvel itself proves nothing. What settles the matter is the message the wonder backs and the God whose hand performs it. Jesus and Paul both repeat that warning: spectacle alone proves nothing.
Nuances
Whether the lawless one's wonders in 2 Thessalonians 2:9 are illusions or genuine supernatural acts that are false only in source and purpose.
- majorityGenuinely supernatural feats, real in power but false in origin and aim, on the pattern of Deuteronomy 13 where a false prophet's sign can actually come to pass.; G. Fee, The First and Second Letters to the Thessalonians, NICNT (Eerdmans, 2009); C. Wanamaker, The Epistles to the Thessalonians, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 1990); A. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians, AB 32B (Doubleday, 2000)
- minorityDeceptive appearances or illusions rather than true miracles.; Augustine, De Civitate Dei 20.19
Disputed
Whether "sign" and "wonder" carry distinct meanings in the New Testament pairing, or function together as a single fixed phrase for God's authenticating miracles.
- majorityThe two words form a fixed pair with no meaningful difference in a given verse; they are never separated, so no exegetical weight should rest on distinguishing them.; C. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (Baker Academic, 2012-15), 1:951-56; G. Twelftree, Paul and the Miraculous (Baker Academic, 2013); H. Balz and G. Schneider, EDNT 3:341-42; J. Louw and E. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains
- minorityThe two words retain distinct force: one stresses the pointing, signifying function, the other the awe-inducing phenomenal effect, even though they always appear together.; K. H. Rengstorf, TDNT 8:113-26, s.v. teras; R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, section 91; BDAG, s.v. teras
Whether the ominous, awe-inducing flavor of the classical Greek word for a portent survives in the New Testament.
- majorityA residual sense of divine intrusion and preternatural strangeness is retained even in positive uses, and becomes audible in the eschatological and false-prophet passages.; K. H. Rengstorf, TDNT 8:113-26, s.v. teras; BDAG, s.v. teras; T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009), s.v. teras
- minorityThe word has been so absorbed into the fixed Old Testament pairing that any independent ominous content is negligible.; H. Balz and G. Schneider, EDNT 3:341-42; J. Louw and E. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains