[Note: A version of this article was originally posted in March 2006.]
The American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf once argued that language is used not only to express our thoughts but to shape them as well. In linguistics, this explanation for the way that language relates to thought is known as a "mould theory" since it represents language as a mould in terms of which thought categories are cast. As Sapir wrote in The Status of Linguistics as a Science, "The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group."
(Quote via Daniel Chandler)*
If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is correct, then it would be wise to become as conscious of our "language habits" as possible. By doing so we might be able to recognize when our thoughts are being misshapen by language and to discard such words from our vocabulary. An example is the term "supernatural," a word that inadvertently causes muddled thinking and confusion.
The connotations implicit in the word supernatural differ based on the subject in which it occurs. When used in the natural sciences the term has a deistic flavor, while in a theological context it has a polytheistic quality. Consider, for example, the way our culture--including most Christians--have come to view the angelic realm. Although scripture is clear that they angels are created by Jesus (Col.1:16), we tend to consider them "supernatural" beings, existing not only outside of nature but outside of creation itself.
The fact that the denotative understanding occurs primarily on a subconscious level only adds to the confusion. By using the term supernatural to refer to such beings we are implying that they belong on the same plane or realm of existence as God.
God
Angels
Satan/demons ___________
Man Nature (i.e., plants, animals, minerals)
One of the reasons we make such errors is because we buy into the modernist notion that all of creation is physical and that angelic beings must necessarily exists on a "supernatural" (i.e., nonphysical) plane separate and distinct from the material cosmos. Essentially, this leads us to concede a point to the physicalist worldview.
Those who believe that the material is all that exists (i.e., materialists, physicalists, some atheists) are forced to reduce or explain everything in terms of the physical. The mind, for example, is considered to be identical and reducible to the physical states of the brain. Senses, emotions, desires, and other intangibles presumably are illusory properties that "emerge" from the physical. All natural laws are therefore physical laws.
But Christians, not being bound by such a limiting worldview, neither have to shoehorn all of reality in the physical nor do we need to invoke a Platonic realm of "forms." Our view of reality is robust enough to recognize that the natural realms consists of such aspects as the quantitative, the ethical, the aesthetic, and the economic, that are not necessarily reducible to another aspect of reality (i.e., the physical). For example I can neither reduce nor derive an ethical obligation (e.g., do not murder) from the physical aspect. Ethics, like many other areas of reality, is related but not reducible to the physical.
Unlike in Plato's view, however, these aspects of reality are not co-equal with God (or as Plato would say, the demiurgos). Although they are "natural" they are not physical (i.e., reducible to the material). This is why I recommend dispensing with the term supernatural when referring to anything other than the Triune God. Rather than using the term natural, we should use--especially in theology and philosophy--the more biblical term of creation or creational.
To understand how this differs from other views, let's compare it to the physicalist worldview. The materialist/physicalist distinguishes the natural from the supernatural based on what has a physical existence. Anything that really exists must be physical and because the supernatural has no physical existence it cannot exist. Ontological reality (the ability to exist) is contingent upon an entity being physical (i.e., a part of the material universe).
Christians, on the other hand, should draw the line of demarcation between the creational/natural and the supernatural based on that which exists necessarily (exists on its own) and that which relies on something else for its existence. According to the Bible, all of creation not only came into existence by God's fiat, but remains in existence only because of his continuous action (sometimes referred to as "providential action" or simply "providence").
Because it is possible for angels, demons, time, and the entire universe to cease to exist, its existence must be radically contingent. Even if the universe has always existed and was uncaused (i.e., the view of steady-state cosmology), its existence would still require a causal agent to keep it from ceasing to exist, to prevent its exnihilation. Since no natural cause exnihilates anything, the cause must be supernatural. A supernatural being (one that is itself uncaused) is required to prevent the universe from turning into nothingness.
The divide between the creational/natural and the supernatural would therefore look something like this:
God
___________ Angels Satan/demons
Man Nature (i.e., plants, animals, minerals)
While not every part of creation is necessarily physical (i.e., time, demons, dimensionality), they are also not supernatural. They are all entities that depend on God's providential action and are subject to His creational norms. Keeping this point in mind will aid us drawing a clear line of demarcation between the Creator and His creation.
Joe, I get to agree with you, flat-out, on this one. That's always pleasing to me! :-)
From my MA thesis:
For Lovecraft, the “supernatural” represents a “particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard” (4). For the Christian, on the contrary, the “fixed laws of Nature,” far from being “our only safeguard,” are particular regularities within a larger context of divine and human agency (both of which, in Lovecraft’s scheme, are reducible to human evolutionary biology), established by God for the benefit of humanity. “Natural law” never provides a comprehensive or determinate explanation of any event, despite the peculiarly modern notion of a closed, mechanical cosmos. Thus “natural law” would better be called “normal,” that is, what can be expected under average circumstances; the “supernatural” would better be called the “supernormal,” that is, what defies human expectations under special circumstances. As Ralph C. Wood argues, the idea of “supernaturalism” forms a “layer-cake theology” in which “God stands essentially outside the cosmic order, except for His occasional disruptions of it.”
I never thought about it that way. But I think your demarcation between supernatural and creational/natural is a superior linguistic framework.
Very good stuff!
Actually, I think your idea is a modernist capitulation to the physicalists.
sounds like the same rationale Schaeffer used in "Descent From Reason."
If that's the case, why don't you use "Protestant" instaed of "Evangelical."?
If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is correct, then it would be wise to become as conscious of our "language habits" as possible. By doing so we might be able to recognize when our thoughts are being misshapen by language and to discard such words from our vocabulary. An example is the term "Evangelical" a word that inadvertently causes muddled thinking and confusion.
The connotations implicit in the word evangelical differ based on the subject in which it occurs.
See?
more than several things came to mind while reading your post. Back in 2002 I read "Creator and the Cosmos" and "Beyond the Cosmos." In it the author makes the case for the multi-dimensionality of God and how advances in modern mathematics and science are actually proving (not disproving) a Creator. That led me to come to the same kind of conclusions that you are making. That when Jesus walked through a wall, it was not supernatural, it was His nature operating within His Creation.
I am not explaining it well but those books totally turned my view of natural into one of the deepest worship experiences I have ever had. I emailed a friend who is truly a rocket scientist and told her that now I understood what she meant by looking at math and being led to worship God.
His glory is right here, right now, if only we have eyes to see and a willingness to look.
This argument is interesting when you combine it with the endless debates about evolution & human souls. One of the frequent arguments made is that we cannot have a theory where humans are 'natural'. They must have souls, free will, or something that makes them partly supernatural. Ergo, evolution must be flawed because how could purely natural stuff (matter) make supernatural stuff (souls, spirits, etc.).
What Joe seems to be saying, though, is that the only division between natural and supernatural is between that which exists contigent on something else and that which exists on its own. God, then would be the only supernatural entity in mainstream Christian thought (although I suppose you could imagine more than one entity that might be able to exist on its own). What we might normally imagine as supernatural (ghosts, spirits, souls, Harry Potter's Hogwarts etc) are just more natural elements whose nature is just not as simple for us to understand as...say...hydrogen atoms.
If you compared this to learning a language like English, we say the natural are the vocabulary words we know now and the supernatural are the words we don't know yet (and may never get around to knowing). In essence it is fuzzy line that is always in flux and is not really describing the state of the outside world but our own state. (In other words, if I don't know the word "paradign" but I do know the word "superstructure"...calling the first supernatural isn't really describing the word itself but is describing my own ignornace).
Where I suspect Joe slips up here is that the entire materialist idea appears to be accepted. Dirt, plans, animals, people and angels depend for their existence on matter. God does not. Therefore studying matter cannot 'prove God' because God's existence does not depend on matter. But everything else's existence does. Therefore humans are no more supernatural than dirt, you can hold onto the belief that inside the normal every day atoms of a human brain there's some other 'thing' but in the end its existence matters only because of matter. In other words, your 'soul', at the end of the day, is going to be made up of something that will feel very at home sitting on the periodic table. The only question is whether or not we got around to giving its seat a formal label or not.
I wonder if Joe would feel comfortable with a variation on Nixon by saying "we are all materialists now"?
"Dirt, plans, animals, people and angels depend for their existence on matter."the
If that's the premise of your objection, then you need to rethink it. Nowhere in Joe's thesis is the idea that "angels depend for their existence on matter," nor have I ever heard anyone propose that. The idea is that angels (which are non-material) like everything else depend for their existence on something else. In the case of dirts, plants, animals, and people, it's God, matter being one of the means God uses. With angels, it's not matter, but they're still contingent on God (and perhaps some other things beyond the scope of our knowledge.)
God stands apart from this scheme, being the only thing in existence that does not depend for existence on something else.
On your other point, the evolutionary conundrum still exists, because souls are non-physical, and therefore a scheme that is supposed to act only on the physical cannot produce souls. Physical:spiritual is NOT the same relationship as natural:supernatural.
Excellent point, and I share your perspective entirely. I often struggle to help Christians see that our belief in the operation of the Holy Spirit, life after death, and miracles, is not akin to "magic" or something otherwise inexplicable, illusory, or unreal. Rather those events point to reality of existence far more than merely physical happenings.
I think this is precisely what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians when he writes, "as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
pentamom
Nowhere in Joe's thesis is the idea that "angels depend for their existence on matter," nor have I ever heard anyone propose that. The idea is that angels (which are non-material) like everything else depend for their existence on something else. In the case of dirts, plants, animals, and people, it's God, matter being one of the means God uses.
What I'm getting at is that in its broad sense everything but God is matter. Angels may or may not be made of a type of matter we are familiar with but if you define matter as simply the stuff of creation then they are made of it as well. As I said, there's always room to add a few seats at the periodic table for 'angel atoms' if necessary.
On your other point, the evolutionary conundrum still exists, because souls are non-physical, and therefore a scheme that is supposed to act only on the physical cannot produce souls. Physical:spiritual is NOT the same relationship as natural:supernatural.
Perhaps you could expand on this a bit. Spirtual 'stuff' is natural and not supernatural (leaving aside God who appears to the the only entity in the supernatural category). What then do you mean by 'physical'? What we term the ordinary matter of the periodic table? Well science basically says the High School chemistry textbook matter is only a tiny percentage of the matter of the visible universe.
If 'physical' simply means the matter we are currently familiar with then you aren't really talking about matter but about us. We know about atoms but know a lot less about 'dark matter' and even less about 'dark energy'. But if physical is simply another way of saying supernatural....well 'dark matter' isn't supernatural and likewise neither is 'spirtuality'. You're simply talking about another aspect of matter.
Hmmm...apparently I haven't been very clear, but I don't know how to untangle this. I'll just have to say that I find a lot of your premises (such as that everything that is a component substance of something that exists is by definition "matter") pretty hard to swallow from the get-go, and let wiser heads battle it out.
Maybe this will make it clearer. What is the dividing line between what you call physical and non-physical? Is it about something 'out there' or something 'in here'?
For example, centuries ago magnetism appeared almost magical. They might have said it was part of the spritual world while 'ordinary matter' like dirt, rock, air, water etc. was physical. We know more about magnetism today so we simply consider it part of the physical world. If this is what you mean by physical world then you're saying the term describes us. The 'physical world' is stuff we understand and the non-physical world is stuff we don't. There's nothing about the stuff itself, though, that makes it physical or non-physical.
If angels exist, then why wouldn't they too be part of our 'physical world'? Perhaps made out of stuff we are not yet familiar or perhaps they are. If human souls are the main stumbling block to accepting evolution then the fact seems to remain in Joe's system human souls are no different than angels or rocks....to exist they all have to depend on something else.
Nice post, but a few adjustments needed (as other commenters have hinted at). By definition, God is the only uncreated being; he is the only being not made (of something). If a thing is made (created), this requires that it be made of something. That something is matter, for lack of a better term. Therefore, angels, demons, other gods (plural elohim in the Hebrew Bible - see www.thedivinecouncil.com) are made of something. The term "supernatural" as you've written, isn't precise or accurate, since these things are part of the natural (created, material) world. Better to use "seen" vs. "unseen" or "unseen material" and so on. There is no need to postulate that a demon need be made of some "other" material stuff; it's just matter, the visibility of which depends on things like size and vibration of the smallest particles of matter (think molecules, atoms, or quanta here). The material reality science is even now identifying matches very well with the dualistic picture (creator vs. created) put forth in the Bible.
Mike (and others), I don't accept the premise that "if a thing is made (created), this requires that it be made of something." The idea that creation consists only of the material didn't develop until the modern era. Thomas Aquinas and other Medieval and ancient philosophers, following Aristotle and Plato, held that such things as abstract principles, thoughts, and other things that we might now call "ideal" had real existence, even though they did not have material components. I happen to agree with this view.
Let's take "matter" as an example. Assuming we agree on the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, before God created any particular matter (like all the stuff we have in our universe), he first must have created the category of "matter". The categorical definition precedes the particular physical object and provides it with its rational structure and (from the human perspective) intelligibility.
A category is non-material, yet it exists. It is not God, therefore it is created. Therefore, there are created things that do not depend on matter for their existence, but depend directly on God.
To relate this to "the supernatural": in my understanding the Medieval realists held that "supernatural" denotes those things which do not depend on matter ("nature") for their being. Thus the human soul, which is the ideal or categorical element of the human person (in Aristotelian terms, the "form" of each individual), is properly called "supernatural" because it does not depend upon matter for its existence. If it did so depend, it would surely cease to exist when the physical body ceased to exist, but Christianity teaches that the soul is immortal and persists after physical death. Thus Christian theology neatly fits with this philosophical definition of the "supernatural."
The case for angels and demons being supernatural is rather more speculative given our contemporary understanding of physics. In premodern times, the fact that spiritual beings were usually invisible and did not appear to be bound by the typical laws of physics as understood at the time was enough to indicate that they were supernatural. However, it seems that modern physics has opened up possibilities for quite extraordinary states of being and interaction that nonetheless fall under the definition of material existence. Whether these possibilities are sufficient to encompass the observed behavior and presumed nature of angels is not clear. I'm afraid that hasn't been a question which modern physics has spent much time pondering. :)
Mike
Better to use "seen" vs. "unseen" or "unseen material" and so on. There is no need to postulate that a demon need be made of some "other" material stuff; it's just matter, the visibility of which depends on things like size and vibration of the smallest particles of matter (think molecules, atoms, or quanta here). The material reality science is even now identifying matches very well with the dualistic picture (creator vs. created) put forth in the Bible.
Well science hasn't been finding angels or demons but that matter is open. "Seen vs. unseen" to me sounds like a description only of the state of our knowledge or minds and not an objective description of the matter you are talking about. Radio waves are 'unseen' yet if you have a radio you can 'see' them (in a manner of speaking). Magenetic waves are 'unseen' but if you're walking with a metal detector you can in a sense 'see' them.
Ethan C
Let's take "matter" as an example. Assuming we agree on the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, before God created any particular matter (like all the stuff we have in our universe), he first must have created the category of "matter". The categorical definition precedes the particular physical object and provides it with its rational structure and (from the human perspective) intelligibility.
Why the word 'must'? What would have happened if God tried to create matter without first creating the 'categorical definition'? Would his computer have locked up?
A category is non-material, yet it exists. It is not God, therefore it is created.
Is it really non-material?
Thus the human soul, which is the ideal or categorical element of the human person (in Aristotelian terms, the "form" of each individual), is properly called "supernatural" because it does not depend upon matter for its existence.
I'm not clear here what you're saying. Are you talking about a particular soul (like Joe's) or the idea of a soul in general? Even using your system it would seem that the idea of a soul could exist as a 'non-material categorical element' but actual souls are quite material.
'Supernatural' is like 'sunrise'. They are phenomenological terms for describing something from the user's perspective. Just as the observer sees the sun move relative to his position, so too, the super is relative to the natural observer.
Using 'Supernatural' to describe Satan does not put him on the same plane as God, it only means he exists beyond our natural perceptions, like God Himself. As finite beings, we have our own frame of reference. What we see is the natural realm and what we may believe exists beyond the natural realm, we call the supernatural realm.
The only reason we know Satan is part of the created order is because special revelation told us so. So, there's nothing wrong with the word 'supernatural' if understood from the frame of reference of a fallible, finite, being.
Dadmin wins this thread; while a distinction between created and uncreated (or contingent and necessary, for that matter) might be useful, supernatural serves a different linguistic function.
I also think that the 'super' part of supernatural might also have something to do with ability to manipulate the physical world, not necessarily a transcendence from it. Angels, demons, Satan, etc. all seem to possess power to do various things, and I think this might contribute somewhat (in conjunction with the observer's perspective, i.e. the observer doesn't know the mechanism by which these manipulations occur) to the use of the term.
Boonton,
I write that the catergory "must" precede the particular because otherwise existant matter would lack structure, rationality, and indeed definition. What, exactly, would matter be if there were no metaphysical definition of its physical properties? I realize that this is an arguable philosophical position; there are reasonable responses to metaphysical realism. My main point is that the conclusions Mr. Long comes to in his initial post, and with which you have expressed your agreement, have simply assumed that the position of modern nominalism is true without examining the potential alternatives.
In your second response, are you arguing that categories are material? Then where, exactly, can we locate them? How can we perceive them through our senses? How are they affected by the laws of physics? The nominalist answer to the realism I've presented is that categories do not actually exist, not that they are material. That is, they are epiphenomena of human cognition, not actual objects. That's a much more defensible position than saying that categories are material.
As to the human soul, I apologize for not writing clearly. I spoke of the individual soul, which, being immortal, seems to be dependent for its existence directly upon the action of God, not mediated through material agents. Again, this is not the only metaphysical position defensible within Christian orthodoxy, but it is historically the most common view and has a very long pedigree. To dismiss it out of hand without offering significant counterarguments is intellectually sloppy.
I like Dadmin's comment, and I think it fairly represents to common usage of the term. That's something like what I was getting at when I wrote about angels appearing to be unbound by physical laws. Some things that may not truly be supernatural nevertheless seem supernatural given our limited knowledge of nature.
However, it's rather presumptuous to jump from this to the conclusion that Mr. Carter seems to reach, that there is nothing besides God that will not eventually be understood in physical terms. There are so many phenomena that remain mysterious, and it seems to me that such an assumption smacks of the same hubris that pervades atheistic materialism.
However, it's rather presumptuous to jump from this to the conclusion that Mr. Carter seems to reach, that there is nothing besides God that will not eventually be understood in physical terms.
There are many natural things that will never be fully understood. We will never know all the prime numbers, for example, but that doesn't make them supernatural or even that mysterious.
In your second response, are you arguing that categories are material? Then where, exactly, can we locate them? How can we perceive them through our senses? How are they affected by the laws of physics? The nominalist answer to the realism I've presented is that categories do not actually exist, not that they are material.
Perhaps you could help me with this a bit more. To me a category would seem to be a mental classification. Take diner plates, for example. That category consists of a set of traits that help me organize different objects together. Specifically, I would use that category to sort out things that are acceptable to serve the main course of dinner on. But that doesn't mean the category existed before dinner plates did. In fact, it seems quite possible someone invented a dinner plate before they invented the idea of dinner plates.
Are we perceiving the 'category' of dinner plates or are we in fact using a kind of mental shorthand. We imagine something called dinner plates because our mind is too limited to consider all the different plates at once in all their attributes. We group things into a shorthand called 'categories' to make life easier for us and we imagine this is the height of intelligence. But if our minds were really supernatural and infinite there'd be no need at all for such shortcuts.
Of course, this also means that souls that are in hell are kept in existence there "because of [God's] continuous action"...
It is a good reminder to watch the words we use to be sure that they are communicating what we think they are to our audience. I know C.S. Lewis says (in my words) if you use a word like awesome when you only needed to use the world "big" you won't have a word to use when you need to mean "awesome". Supernatural is used widely at times and it is good to remember that it may not be communicating what we want it to if it is overused or misused.
I suppose it may be a bit late to respond, as I don't know who may still be reading this thread. But here I go anyway, if for no one's benefit but my own:
Boonton, what you espouse in your latest post is the classic nominalist position proposed as an alternative to metaphysical realism. Its pedigree goes back at least as far as William of Occam (of the famous "Occam's razor") in the 14th century.
What I see as the main trouble with that position is that it reduces all abstract principles to a state of non-being. As in your example of prime numbers, a number cannot be said to have real existence within a nominalist metaphysics because it does not correspond to a particular physical object. It is, at best, merely a convenient mental trick for thinking about objects. There is no such thing as a number per se. There are, at best, only numbers of things: this one rock, those three trees, etc. But as soon as we begin speaking of "one plus three" without referring to particular things, we are beginning to lie to ourselves about what is actually real. By the time we get to a category of such supposed things as "prime numbers," which are defined not by their correspondence to physical objects but only by their relationship to other numbers, we are far away from anything that exists in actual reality, caught up in a web of abstractions that trick us into thinking that we are talking about things when actually we are merely playing word games with arbitrary definitions.
Now, I'm quite sure that you could find mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics that accept that supposition. So what's the problem?
The problem, not merely in math but in all of philosophy and especially ethics, is that nominalism lends itself to a subjectivist view of abstractions. Not just numbers, but also such things as "justice," "mercy," "goodness," "human person," and the like are seen as merely convenient categories that the human mind has devised to help itself make sense of the physical universe. Since these categories have no actual existence, there are two results: (1) The significance of any physical object, moral or otherwise, is not inherent in the object itself, but only arises within the mind; and (2) The human mind is free to amend its invented categories as it sees fit for whatever purposes it chooses, or even to discard them completely if it so decides. It's a rather short step from these conclusions to the sort of infinitely plastic view of both ethics and human personhood that is so common in modern thought.
But besides this argument from implications (which, of course, can never be persuasive to someone who finds the implications acceptable), I think that the nominalist position is demonstrably untrue. Let me use your dinner plate example. You claim that it's possible that "it seems quite possible someone invented a dinner plate before they invented the idea of dinner plates." Yet think about that for a moment: how is that possible? Are you telling me that someone created an object for a particular purpose (the dinner plate), without first having an idea of what that purpose was, and how that object could serve it? I can't think of any inventions that have arisen in that way. It certainly isn't the case for your particular dinner plates, which probably came from a factory, were produced according to a preexisting schematic design, and were intended from before their physical manufacture to have dinner one day served upon them.
Perhaps, alternatively, in the distant past someone appropriated a preexisting object, maybe a flat rock, to serve as a diner plate. What was not a dinner plate then became a dinner plate, due to its change in purpose. Yet the idea of using something as a dinner plate still would have come before the moment of appropriation, as someone would have had to imagine the use of the object as a plate before they began to use it so.
So, then, at least for objects defined by their use, the idea must exist before the physical object exists. But what about naturally occurring objects? For an atheistic materialist, the only possible answer is that natural objects exist without any preceding idea. Yet philosophically, this demands an answer to the question: Why, then, are they objects at all? Why is the human mind capable of distinguishing between separate things, and even identifying commonalities and differences between things well enough to invent categories, if the physical universe is void of all meaning and definition besides what we invent for it? If all our rational categories are illusions, why do we feel the need to lie to ourselves, to pretend that they actually correspond to reality or describe the universe in a meaningful way?
The Christian, however, need not fall into this strange puzzle. Our account of creation holds that God spoke the world into being, and in doing so defined objects according to categories long before He created human beings. His creation of light, and even more tellingly his separation of light from darkness, describes an ordering of physical objects and types of matter that imbues them with categorical definitions inherent to their being. The abstract categories of matter constitute the actual nature of matter, which explains at once both the existence of matter generally and the separation of objects from one another.
I'm sure I'm making my arguments more complicated than they have to be. Suffice it to say that I view the supernatural, properly defined, as the action that immaterial objects, such as categories, have on the natural world. And because the human mind can meaningfully think about these immaterial objects (contra the views of Kant and others), I think "supernatural" is a useful term to retain in describing objects and their effects besides God Himself. I think the original post might be onto something in that it might be dangerous to describe God as "supernatural," as though He were merely another immaterial object, rather than standing above them like a potter above His pots.