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6. Finally, it should argue that, either way, Christian faith in God is more than supernaturalistic belief, because it is obedient trust in and loyalty to God as one's own God and not simply belief in certain assertions about God. This means that such obedient faith can be absent even where there is the most orthodox supernaturalism, even as faith can be present even where it is only inadequately objectified in the most heterodox naturalism. Christian faith in God is faith decisively through Jesus Christ, and therefore, in a way, also in Jesus Christ -- although not, of course, simply belief in certain assertions about him, but also -- and primarily -- faith in him himself as the veritable incarnation of God's own word of pure, unbounded love.

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1. One problem with carrying out the above project is to get a clear and sharp definition of "naturalism" and "supernaturalism." There is the need to show, specifically, that both terms can be defined either more strictly or more broadly and that in their broad definitions they, in a way, coincide, or, at least, approach one another, in meaning. Actually, it would appear that "naturalism" in the broad sense is a theistic metaphysics, whereas "supernaturalism" in the broad sense is the religious fulfillment of a theistic metaphysics.

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3 December 1971; rev. 31 July 2009                                                                                                              

On "Supernaturalism"

According to Blumenberg, "the supranatural to begin with is the future, that which is temporally transcendent of the world; it is only the weakening of eschatology that makes out of this a permanent 'level' of being above nature, and thus makes human life into an existence in two realities. This scheme, subtly worked out by the scholastics, already implies the antithesis; what it actualizes can be entirely reduced to one theological element: the voluntarism in the concept of God. Since what one may call the supranaturalism of the theology of grace is at bottom only an aspect of voluntarism, it is naturalism and voluntarism that finally stand over against one another in our tradition" (RGG³ , IV, 1333).

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