Faith, Grace and Supernatural

Faith, Grace and Supernatural

in a World of Science

Taking faith for granted. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, faith in religious beliefs is taken for granted: religious teachings are simply accepted as revealed by God. There is the belief that the Scriptures (the Hebrew Bible for Jews and also the New Testament for Christians), are Word of God and therefore must be believed. Add to this, for Christians, the teachings of the so called Tradition, as the teachings of the Councils and of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

Natural and supernatural order. Natural order is the ensemble of laws, powers and effects of the created (or "eternal") universe; and supernatural order is the ensemble of beings or events that exceeds the natural order.

Grace and Supernatural in the Christian tradition. One of the teachings of Christianity is what is called salvation by the grace of God. This means that man is called by God to an order above the natural order, the supernatural order. This call is by God's free will and loving act, and hence it is called grace.

Grace and supernatural begins on earth; man is "elevated" here to a supra-natural order. He is also predestined to an eternal life after death. The earliest documents of this Page, Christianity reformed from its roots, deal with the main topics of grace and supernatural in the Christian tradition. I won't repeat them here.

Communication with God. One of the questions that we might have is whether grace and a supernatural order are necessary for man to communicate with God. In other words, could the relationship man-God be a "natural" act? We may wonder if we can communicate with God from a natural stance. To believe that this communication is grace and supernatural is only a presupposition of faith, and there is no proof that it is so.

Man's religious acts are human actions, are natural acts. It seems that there is no need of grace or of an "elevation" to a supernatural order to perform a religious act as worship, praise, thanksgiving, trust, and to express an attitude of awe and reverence. Man may love God humanly and naturally.

Where the supra natural might be. The existence of the supernatural cannot be proven. The belief in a supernatural order could be, either by a religious faith, or simply because it is more rational to believe in a supra natural cause or explanation for the existence of the universe than to believe in either an eternal universe or that it started by chance. I personally believe in a supernatural Being.

God as a natural being. Not everybody who believes in God believes that he is a supernatural Being. In the pantheistic interpretation the universe is god, nature is god; there is not a supernatural order. Of course this is a god, but not the God of deist or theist interpretations.

An interpretation close to pantheism is that of those believers in God, as Einstein for example, who believe in God as a "natural" God, perhaps transcendent and necessary, but neither personal nor "involved" with humankind, although creator of the universe, its laws, and present in creation.