Supernatural

Do Christians believe in the supernatural? The answer might seem obvious, but it depends on what you mean by ‘supernatural’. Usually people mean extraordinary phenomena—ghosts, esoteric powers, inexplicable events. Many popular writers have made good careers out of this ‘supernature’.

Its attraction comes from a wish that reality might be more mysterious than we think; to believe, with Hamlet, that there is more in heaven and earth than our philosophy allows for. We want bounds to be wider and space for surprise.

But for that reason, none of those phenomena are really supernatural at all. Those who believe in them are simply claiming that nature includes more than we thought it did. A ghost in my bedroom has to be considered natural.

Christians have no special view of this ‘supernatural’. It all comes down to evidence. If you can show me a ghost, and prove that it is not mist or hallucination, I will believe in it. You will have shown me that my idea of nature was incomplete.

The Christian supernatural is really nothing like that. It is not a murky realm of odd phenomena hovering around the fringes of reality. God is not a ‘supernatural’ being, like a ghost or the tooth fairy.

In Christian use, supernatural means ‘whatever goes beyond what nature, by itself, could have produced.’ God is supernatural in that sense, because he does not arise out of nature. And so is our vision of God, because there is no natural occasion for it. It does not grow out of our nature as human animals, nor do we need it in order to function naturally in our world.

Christianity speaks of the supernatural in terms of grace. Grace is not the result of any effort on our part. We know grace when we are open to the being of God, to the pure gift of love or hope or faith or forgiveness. In all those moments there is liberation; what we are is no longer fixed and constrained by our nature. We enter a freedom that is not our own.

This supernatural inhabits our world, though its origin is elsewhere. It does not destroy our nature, but fulfils it. And, paradoxically, it may not even be extraordinary: the supernatural of God can meet us at any turn of our way.