The Super, The Natural and the Supernatural
"I don't really believe in the supernatural."
So said a priest friend of mine recently.
I was somewhat taken aback. He is, after all, a man of great faith who passionately believes in God.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word supernatural as that which is ".....beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature". Surely this is true of God? Indeed one might well ask what would be the point of God if he weren't supernatural?
My friend is in fact a devout Anglo-Catholic; he therefore believes at the very least that when he recites the eucharistic prayer, invoking the Holy Spirit at the Lesser Epiclesis and repeating Our Lord's words of institution ("This is my body which is given for you; this is my blood.....which is shed for you") Christ becomes especially present in the bread and wine - or more - that their very substance is mystically transformed. My friend also believes that this consecration of the elements happens because of the ontological change (a change in 'being') that takes place when someone is ordained as a priest.
So it seems my friend has no trouble at-all in believing that God acts supernaturally in the sacraments of Ordination and the Eucharist. In both instances, the change that takes place as a result of God's action is 'beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature'. I don't, therefore, believe that he really means what he says when he claims not to believe in the supernatural. What I think he really means is that whilst God works in a mystical way through the sacraments, he does not do so in other more every-day contexts.
He is far from alone in this view. Indeed, this is one of the reasons that so many people are suspicious of, or troubled by, the Charismatic movement. The notion of God as Holy Spirit i.e. present with, within and around us, and active in the world, is a step too far beyond scientific understanding and the (apparent) laws of nature. It is also a step out of our comfort zone. After all, it's fairly easy to keep God the Father at a safe distance in his transcendence and to confine God the Son to the pages of the Gospel; but in God the Holy Spirit we're confronted with the imminent God, the God of the here and now - the God who calls us into relationship with a living Christ rather than simply following an inspiring historical figure. Ironically, many Christians merrily celebrate the concept of 'Emmanuel' (God With Us) at Christmas but seem reluctant to ponder its reality at other times, many anxiously packing it away with the tinsel and the Christmas tree baubles.
There are, I think, three main problems underlying people's reluctance to accept the supernatural reality of the Holy Spirit.
1. The transformative work of the Holy Spirit
When the Holy Spirit acts - for example in the sacraments of Ordination or the Eucharist - the action is transformative; a profound change takes place in the person being ordained or the elements being consecrated. If we dare to allow the Holy Spirit to act in our lives, there's a very scary possibility - or indeed even a certainty - that this will effect change. One feature of our (fallen) humanity is that we are often fearful of change - certainly of change that takes place around us - but perhaps, albeit subconsciously, even more so of change that takes place within us.
There is a well-known cartoon that shows a minister asking his congregation, "Who thinks the Church needs to change?" Everyone eagerly puts their hand up. The minister then asks, "And which of you are willing to change?" and not a single hand is raised.
One of the times when the Holy Spirit is at work in us is when we dare to repent - when we recognise that we have acted in a way that is contrary to God's will and purpose for us. Often that repentance will be a triumph of God's promptings over the 'laws' (instincts) of our human nature. So, for example, instead of harbouring very human feelings of anger and resentment towards someone who has hurt us, we actually embrace instead the call to forgiveness and reconciliation. The Greek word for repentance used in the Gospels is 'metanoia' meaning literally a turning-around. It's a change not simply of mind, but of heart - something that happens not just at the intellectual level but at the very core of our being.
But changes of heart often come at a price.
Many years ago I had a significant change of heart when I decided that the arguments against the ordination of women as priests and bishops to which I had dutifully held as a 'good' Catholic really didn't hold water. That change lost me a lot of friends, although it also gained me many new ones. Similarly, more recently when I rekindled a Charismatic spirituality which I thought I had abandoned once and for all many years ago, many of my friends were decidedly 'iffy' about it; but once again new friends have come along and new pathways have opened up to me.
Change in us as individuals and change in the Church (the latter often resulting from the former) is, I believe a result of the work of the Holy Spirit. Put another way it's the supernatural action of God. I don't believe we should be self-conscious about this. Indeed when a priest says Mass and raises his/her hands and prays the Greater Epiclesis, (s)he is inviting God to send the Holy Spirit on his people. To do this with neither priest nor people believing that something happens at this point, and without being open to the Holy Spirit, open to change and anticipating transformation is surely a nonsense.
Whilst the Holy Spirit is a gift imparted to all Christians in the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, there is a distinction, rooted in scripture, between receiving this gift and the Holy Spirit 'falling'. In St John's Gospel, the gift of the Holy Spirit is given in the upper room where the risen Jesus appears and gently breathes on the disciples saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (c.f. John 20:22). But in Acts 1 on the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit descends dramatically upon and around the disciples in the imagery of violent wind and tongues of fire and with supernatural consequences as people of so many nationalities and languages each hear the Good News being preached in their own tongue.
For many Charismatics, the falling of the Holy Spirit in their lives is labelled as 'Baptism in the Holy Spirit'. For those of us of a Catholic persuasion, this can raise difficulties as it potentially undermines the once for all sacrament of baptism. Some prefer the term 'Anointing in the Holy Spirit', but this too implies that there is a one-off encounter with the Holy Spirit who falls upon us, whereas this anointing is actually offered day after day, week after week in every celebration of the Eucharist.
When we gather as a Eucharistic community, we need to be ready to be transformed by the Holy Spirit whose presence and action is invoked, and by the Christ whom we receive in transformed bread and wine, and all of these transformations are a supernatural act of God.
2. The problem of Evil
It is quite unfashionable in today's Church to believe in the devil. Indeed, I would be the first to agree that to anthropomorphise evil, giving it horns, a pointed tail and a trident is very unhelpful. Nevertheless one needs to do little more than to pick up a newspaper or watch the TV news to be convinced of the reality of evil in our world. The traditional caricature devil can too easily be regarded as a pantomime villain who has been out of fashion since medieval times. This can dangerously undermine any belief in the reality of evil as a force that works against God's loving purposes.
Another reason that some people are uncomfortable with the notion of a supernatural God is because they are even more uncomfortable with the notion of a supernatural force of evil, and they suspect - probably rightly - that you can't really have one without the other. For them, it's much better to attribute all that is wrong in the world to the psychological, emotional and spiritual flaws of a 'fallen' humanity. In other words, the world's evil can all be explained within the laws of nature, albeit flawed human nature.
On the other hand, I see an unhealthy preoccupation with evil - and indeed with 'spiritual warfare' - as one of the potentially dangerous excesses of the Charismatic movement. It can result in attributing far too readily harmful, destructive and sinful human actions to demonic possession, and can even result in ad hoc 'exorcisms' which are undertaken - quite illegally in the CofE - in an irresponsible and amateurish way by those who have not been properly trained and authorised for such a ministry. Such actions can result in severe psychological harm to the 'possessed' person. Whilst human failings such as addictions to food, alcohol, gambling or sex may well prompt prayers for healing, to label the condition itself as demonic is to detract from the individual's responsibility for his or her actions and/or to deny the reality of - and to potentially exacerbate - a mental health problem which requires medical intervention.
For what it is worth, I do believe that there are occasions when evil manifests itself in a supernatural way. But these are few and far between, and evil normally works far more subtly through the flawed nature of humankind, fuelling selfishness, greed, cruelty and hatred until there is an explosion of wickedness such as The Holocaust.
So evil needs to be kept in perspective. Indeed, where it is either ignored and denied, or where it is obsessed over, it is more likely to flourish. We need to remember the words of St Paul:
…...in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.. (Romans 8:37-39)
We are protected from the supernatural forces of evil by a supernatural God. Believing in the latter does not make us in any way more vulnerable to the former, quite the reverse.
3. The unpredictability of supernatural phenomena
Finally, as I suggested at the outset, many objections to the idea of a supernatural God arise from problems believing in God's mystical activity in our everyday world. Such objections seem to rest on the assumption that having created the world and set its forces of nature to work, God then stood back, effectively not just resting on the seventh day (as the creation myth tells us) but for the rest of eternity.
We know, of course, that this isn't the case, because God embarked upon a particular intervention in the history of humankind with the incarnation. The incarnation itself was a supernatural act, albeit one that also required human co-operation - the Fiat ('Yes') of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This intervention - the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus - itself challenges the notion of the non-interventionist God. Whilst St John labels the miracles of Jesus as 'signs' I find it difficult to see all the miracles of the synoptic gospels as being primarily Jesus demonstrating who he is, rather than acts of genuine compassion and mercy. Some of these miracles, of course, show Jesus wielding power over the forces of nature i.e. acting supernaturally.
There are those who have put a lot of time and effort into trying to 'de-bunk' the miracles and to rationalise them. Whilst there may well have been some poetic license and a bit of exaggeration or misunderstanding here and there as the oral tradition evolved into the written Gospels, this is hardly significant when weighed against the abilities of a God who creates a universe, becomes incarnate and rises from the dead.
The difficulty in believing in an interventionist God is that there is an inconsistency - some might even say 'fickleness' - about God's apparent readiness to intervene.
The other week I heard the wonderful story of a woman who had been diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer, who required urgent and drastic surgery. When she was admitted to hospital for the operation, pre-operative tests showed completely different results from those undertaken when she was diagnosed. As a result, further tests, scans and examinations were undertaken, and it became evident that the cancer was no longer present. None of the medical staff could explain what had happened. Investigations indicated that there was no confusion or mix-up with earlier scans, X-rays etc and that something inexplicable had occurred. The woman herself, and all who had been praying for her, were overjoyed and saw this an answer to prayer. God, it seemed, had healed her.
Non-believers - and maybe even some believers - might suggest that there must be a natural explanation for what happened that is currently beyond our understanding. Who knows?
The difficulty with this sort of thing, of course, is that for every story of a miraculous cure there are hundreds of other stories where that is not the case. So the question is inevitably asked, "Why was so-and-so healed, whilst so-and-so wasn't?" It's a question that is thrown at clergy regularly, and to which there is no easy answer.
Whenever I talk to people about healing, I always stress that it isn't just - or even primarily - about physical cures, but is rather about the human 'trinity' of mind, body and spirit being somehow brought to greater wholeness. This can be manifested in a variety of ways - perhaps with renewed strength to cope with an illness; perhaps with a lessening of pain; perhaps with a greater sense of peace or resignation. But I also stress that we only become truly 'whole' when we pass through one final act of healing - death itself.
Dying, of course, can in the worst-case scenario be a horrible, bloody and traumatic business. But death is the end of this process and is in itself - as people so often say - a 'release' from the suffering of dying. Whilst we tend to instinctively treat death as the unavoidable enemy whom we strive to avoid, we perhaps need to be more like St Francis, who eventually was able to resign himself to the inevitability of death and to welcome it as his 'sister'. To the bereaved, of course - even those with a strong faith - it doesn't feel like this. They are stuck with a new burden of suffering - a sense of grief and loss which itself triggers a whole range of devastating emotions. In the face of such emotions, we need to beware speaking too glibly about death being a healing, for it can too often sound like little more than 'pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die'.
My point is that God's healing takes many forms and sometimes indeed ultimately for all of us - it takes the form of death. In the meantime, there are occasions when it does seem as if prayer is answered and a miraculous 'cure' occurs.
It inevitably feels very unsatisfactory to be unable to explain these inconsistencies - not least to those angered by the suffering or death of a loved one and what they see as God's indifference to their prayers. In fact, I often find myself thinking - or saying - that however many hard questions God may have to put to me on the Day of Judgement, I've got more than a few for him. The God I believe in is big enough to take that. Nevertheless, my inability to understand does not negate my belief that there are some situations in which God acts in a way that is beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.
So, unlike my friend - and despite all the struggles and questions and complexities - I believe firmly in a supernatural God.
So said a priest friend of mine recently.
I was somewhat taken aback. He is, after all, a man of great faith who passionately believes in God.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word supernatural as that which is ".....beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature". Surely this is true of God? Indeed one might well ask what would be the point of God if he weren't supernatural?
My friend is in fact a devout Anglo-Catholic; he therefore believes at the very least that when he recites the eucharistic prayer, invoking the Holy Spirit at the Lesser Epiclesis and repeating Our Lord's words of institution ("This is my body which is given for you; this is my blood.....which is shed for you") Christ becomes especially present in the bread and wine - or more - that their very substance is mystically transformed. My friend also believes that this consecration of the elements happens because of the ontological change (a change in 'being') that takes place when someone is ordained as a priest.
So it seems my friend has no trouble at-all in believing that God acts supernaturally in the sacraments of Ordination and the Eucharist. In both instances, the change that takes place as a result of God's action is 'beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature'. I don't, therefore, believe that he really means what he says when he claims not to believe in the supernatural. What I think he really means is that whilst God works in a mystical way through the sacraments, he does not do so in other more every-day contexts.
He is far from alone in this view. Indeed, this is one of the reasons that so many people are suspicious of, or troubled by, the Charismatic movement. The notion of God as Holy Spirit i.e. present with, within and around us, and active in the world, is a step too far beyond scientific understanding and the (apparent) laws of nature. It is also a step out of our comfort zone. After all, it's fairly easy to keep God the Father at a safe distance in his transcendence and to confine God the Son to the pages of the Gospel; but in God the Holy Spirit we're confronted with the imminent God, the God of the here and now - the God who calls us into relationship with a living Christ rather than simply following an inspiring historical figure. Ironically, many Christians merrily celebrate the concept of 'Emmanuel' (God With Us) at Christmas but seem reluctant to ponder its reality at other times, many anxiously packing it away with the tinsel and the Christmas tree baubles.
There are, I think, three main problems underlying people's reluctance to accept the supernatural reality of the Holy Spirit.
1. The transformative work of the Holy Spirit
When the Holy Spirit acts - for example in the sacraments of Ordination or the Eucharist - the action is transformative; a profound change takes place in the person being ordained or the elements being consecrated. If we dare to allow the Holy Spirit to act in our lives, there's a very scary possibility - or indeed even a certainty - that this will effect change. One feature of our (fallen) humanity is that we are often fearful of change - certainly of change that takes place around us - but perhaps, albeit subconsciously, even more so of change that takes place within us.
There is a well-known cartoon that shows a minister asking his congregation, "Who thinks the Church needs to change?" Everyone eagerly puts their hand up. The minister then asks, "And which of you are willing to change?" and not a single hand is raised.
One of the times when the Holy Spirit is at work in us is when we dare to repent - when we recognise that we have acted in a way that is contrary to God's will and purpose for us. Often that repentance will be a triumph of God's promptings over the 'laws' (instincts) of our human nature. So, for example, instead of harbouring very human feelings of anger and resentment towards someone who has hurt us, we actually embrace instead the call to forgiveness and reconciliation. The Greek word for repentance used in the Gospels is 'metanoia' meaning literally a turning-around. It's a change not simply of mind, but of heart - something that happens not just at the intellectual level but at the very core of our being.
But changes of heart often come at a price.
Many years ago I had a significant change of heart when I decided that the arguments against the ordination of women as priests and bishops to which I had dutifully held as a 'good' Catholic really didn't hold water. That change lost me a lot of friends, although it also gained me many new ones. Similarly, more recently when I rekindled a Charismatic spirituality which I thought I had abandoned once and for all many years ago, many of my friends were decidedly 'iffy' about it; but once again new friends have come along and new pathways have opened up to me.
Change in us as individuals and change in the Church (the latter often resulting from the former) is, I believe a result of the work of the Holy Spirit. Put another way it's the supernatural action of God. I don't believe we should be self-conscious about this. Indeed when a priest says Mass and raises his/her hands and prays the Greater Epiclesis, (s)he is inviting God to send the Holy Spirit on his people. To do this with neither priest nor people believing that something happens at this point, and without being open to the Holy Spirit, open to change and anticipating transformation is surely a nonsense.
Whilst the Holy Spirit is a gift imparted to all Christians in the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, there is a distinction, rooted in scripture, between receiving this gift and the Holy Spirit 'falling'. In St John's Gospel, the gift of the Holy Spirit is given in the upper room where the risen Jesus appears and gently breathes on the disciples saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (c.f. John 20:22). But in Acts 1 on the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit descends dramatically upon and around the disciples in the imagery of violent wind and tongues of fire and with supernatural consequences as people of so many nationalities and languages each hear the Good News being preached in their own tongue.
For many Charismatics, the falling of the Holy Spirit in their lives is labelled as 'Baptism in the Holy Spirit'. For those of us of a Catholic persuasion, this can raise difficulties as it potentially undermines the once for all sacrament of baptism. Some prefer the term 'Anointing in the Holy Spirit', but this too implies that there is a one-off encounter with the Holy Spirit who falls upon us, whereas this anointing is actually offered day after day, week after week in every celebration of the Eucharist.
When we gather as a Eucharistic community, we need to be ready to be transformed by the Holy Spirit whose presence and action is invoked, and by the Christ whom we receive in transformed bread and wine, and all of these transformations are a supernatural act of God.
2. The problem of Evil
It is quite unfashionable in today's Church to believe in the devil. Indeed, I would be the first to agree that to anthropomorphise evil, giving it horns, a pointed tail and a trident is very unhelpful. Nevertheless one needs to do little more than to pick up a newspaper or watch the TV news to be convinced of the reality of evil in our world. The traditional caricature devil can too easily be regarded as a pantomime villain who has been out of fashion since medieval times. This can dangerously undermine any belief in the reality of evil as a force that works against God's loving purposes.
Another reason that some people are uncomfortable with the notion of a supernatural God is because they are even more uncomfortable with the notion of a supernatural force of evil, and they suspect - probably rightly - that you can't really have one without the other. For them, it's much better to attribute all that is wrong in the world to the psychological, emotional and spiritual flaws of a 'fallen' humanity. In other words, the world's evil can all be explained within the laws of nature, albeit flawed human nature.
On the other hand, I see an unhealthy preoccupation with evil - and indeed with 'spiritual warfare' - as one of the potentially dangerous excesses of the Charismatic movement. It can result in attributing far too readily harmful, destructive and sinful human actions to demonic possession, and can even result in ad hoc 'exorcisms' which are undertaken - quite illegally in the CofE - in an irresponsible and amateurish way by those who have not been properly trained and authorised for such a ministry. Such actions can result in severe psychological harm to the 'possessed' person. Whilst human failings such as addictions to food, alcohol, gambling or sex may well prompt prayers for healing, to label the condition itself as demonic is to detract from the individual's responsibility for his or her actions and/or to deny the reality of - and to potentially exacerbate - a mental health problem which requires medical intervention.
For what it is worth, I do believe that there are occasions when evil manifests itself in a supernatural way. But these are few and far between, and evil normally works far more subtly through the flawed nature of humankind, fuelling selfishness, greed, cruelty and hatred until there is an explosion of wickedness such as The Holocaust.
So evil needs to be kept in perspective. Indeed, where it is either ignored and denied, or where it is obsessed over, it is more likely to flourish. We need to remember the words of St Paul:
…...in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.. (Romans 8:37-39)
We are protected from the supernatural forces of evil by a supernatural God. Believing in the latter does not make us in any way more vulnerable to the former, quite the reverse.
3. The unpredictability of supernatural phenomena
Finally, as I suggested at the outset, many objections to the idea of a supernatural God arise from problems believing in God's mystical activity in our everyday world. Such objections seem to rest on the assumption that having created the world and set its forces of nature to work, God then stood back, effectively not just resting on the seventh day (as the creation myth tells us) but for the rest of eternity.
We know, of course, that this isn't the case, because God embarked upon a particular intervention in the history of humankind with the incarnation. The incarnation itself was a supernatural act, albeit one that also required human co-operation - the Fiat ('Yes') of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This intervention - the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus - itself challenges the notion of the non-interventionist God. Whilst St John labels the miracles of Jesus as 'signs' I find it difficult to see all the miracles of the synoptic gospels as being primarily Jesus demonstrating who he is, rather than acts of genuine compassion and mercy. Some of these miracles, of course, show Jesus wielding power over the forces of nature i.e. acting supernaturally.
There are those who have put a lot of time and effort into trying to 'de-bunk' the miracles and to rationalise them. Whilst there may well have been some poetic license and a bit of exaggeration or misunderstanding here and there as the oral tradition evolved into the written Gospels, this is hardly significant when weighed against the abilities of a God who creates a universe, becomes incarnate and rises from the dead.
The difficulty in believing in an interventionist God is that there is an inconsistency - some might even say 'fickleness' - about God's apparent readiness to intervene.
The other week I heard the wonderful story of a woman who had been diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer, who required urgent and drastic surgery. When she was admitted to hospital for the operation, pre-operative tests showed completely different results from those undertaken when she was diagnosed. As a result, further tests, scans and examinations were undertaken, and it became evident that the cancer was no longer present. None of the medical staff could explain what had happened. Investigations indicated that there was no confusion or mix-up with earlier scans, X-rays etc and that something inexplicable had occurred. The woman herself, and all who had been praying for her, were overjoyed and saw this an answer to prayer. God, it seemed, had healed her.
Non-believers - and maybe even some believers - might suggest that there must be a natural explanation for what happened that is currently beyond our understanding. Who knows?
The difficulty with this sort of thing, of course, is that for every story of a miraculous cure there are hundreds of other stories where that is not the case. So the question is inevitably asked, "Why was so-and-so healed, whilst so-and-so wasn't?" It's a question that is thrown at clergy regularly, and to which there is no easy answer.
Whenever I talk to people about healing, I always stress that it isn't just - or even primarily - about physical cures, but is rather about the human 'trinity' of mind, body and spirit being somehow brought to greater wholeness. This can be manifested in a variety of ways - perhaps with renewed strength to cope with an illness; perhaps with a lessening of pain; perhaps with a greater sense of peace or resignation. But I also stress that we only become truly 'whole' when we pass through one final act of healing - death itself.
Dying, of course, can in the worst-case scenario be a horrible, bloody and traumatic business. But death is the end of this process and is in itself - as people so often say - a 'release' from the suffering of dying. Whilst we tend to instinctively treat death as the unavoidable enemy whom we strive to avoid, we perhaps need to be more like St Francis, who eventually was able to resign himself to the inevitability of death and to welcome it as his 'sister'. To the bereaved, of course - even those with a strong faith - it doesn't feel like this. They are stuck with a new burden of suffering - a sense of grief and loss which itself triggers a whole range of devastating emotions. In the face of such emotions, we need to beware speaking too glibly about death being a healing, for it can too often sound like little more than 'pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die'.
My point is that God's healing takes many forms and sometimes indeed ultimately for all of us - it takes the form of death. In the meantime, there are occasions when it does seem as if prayer is answered and a miraculous 'cure' occurs.
It inevitably feels very unsatisfactory to be unable to explain these inconsistencies - not least to those angered by the suffering or death of a loved one and what they see as God's indifference to their prayers. In fact, I often find myself thinking - or saying - that however many hard questions God may have to put to me on the Day of Judgement, I've got more than a few for him. The God I believe in is big enough to take that. Nevertheless, my inability to understand does not negate my belief that there are some situations in which God acts in a way that is beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.
So, unlike my friend - and despite all the struggles and questions and complexities - I believe firmly in a supernatural God.
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