Sunday, March 25, 2007

Belief in supernatural phenomena.

"The problem with terms like "supernatural" and "supernaturalism" ... is that they tacitly presuppose that nature is the fundamental reality and that nature is far less problematic conceptually than anything outside or beyond nature. The "super" in "supernatural" thus has the effect of a negation.
But what if nature is itself a negation or reaction against something else? For the theist (though not for the panentheist of process theology), nature is not a self-subsisting entity but an entirely free act of God. Nature thus becomes a derivative aspect of ultimate reality—an aspect of God's creation, and not even the whole of God's creation at that (theists typically ascribe to God the creation of an invisible world that is inhabited among other things by angels). Hence, for the theist attempting to understand nature, God as creator is fundamental, the creation is derivative, and nature as the physical part of creation is still further downstream.
C.S. Lewis argued in his book, Miracles, that it is inaccurate to define a miracle as breaking the laws of nature. Instead,
"The great complex event called Nature, and the new particular event introduced into it by the miracle, are related by their common origin in God, and doubtless, if we knew enough, most intricately related in his purpose and design, so that a Nature which had had a different history, and therefore been a different Nature, would have been invaded by different miracles or by none at all."
In connection with his writing about the appearance of Jesus Christ the Apostle Paul himself acknowledges that; "oppositions of science" will occur and so leaves a testimony in the Bible regarding a supernatural event to which many may struggle to attach a scientific explanation. This may also be viewed as a reference to Gnosticism, however, as the Greek word translated as science is ???s?? (gnosis).

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