Natural and Supernatural

There is a very common usage of the word supernatural by both protestants and Catholics that is not Catholic at all and that probably originated in the literary studies of C.S. Lewis, beloved by protestants and Catholics equally (this present writer excepted). It usually occurs in a context referring to Creation by God. Here is a quotation from Father Robert Spitzer’s New Proofs for the Existence of God, (Eerdmans, 2010):

“evidence of the extremely high improbability of an anthropic universe (one that will allow the emergence of any life form), implying the possibility of supernatural design…”(p.4, number 2)

Another occurrence is on page 13 – where Father Spitzer quotes with complete approval, the words of the Nobel prize winning physicist Arno Penzias:

“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.” Again, on page 22, we have this statement by Father Spitzer:

“We should begin by clarifiying what science can really tell us about a beginning of the universe and supernatural causation….” – and finally, on page 23: “These seemingly highly improbable conditions – (which are sometimes called “cosmic coincidences”or “anthropic coincidences”) can imply an element of supernatural fine-tuning, if no satisfactory naturalistic explanation can be found for them. This evidence is discussed in Chapter Two.”

In all fairness to Father Spitzer and to a definite shift in his usage in the rest of the book, of which more later, it must be emphasized that he is speaking from within the evolutionary world view which insists upon its naturalism. This encourages, therefore, the usage of super-natural, if one wishes to make the case for some utterly transcendent Cause and Being. And Father Spitzer does this in much later pages of his book, especially in Chapter Six and the sub-section on causality. His shift of terms is noticeable, for example, on page 45, where he states: “This transcendent cause of the universe may also be the cause of time itself..”

Well, of course this transcendent cause is the cause of all things and there is much to be said about time and also about the 13.7 billions of years that Father Spitzer accepts uncritically. But for the moment, it may be useful to make some points about the usage of the term supernatural.