A summary of my View of the Supernatural

For the past few days I've been involved in huge posting discussion on Secular outpost. I've been discussing the concept of the /supernatural. The thing has gone on for three posts each generating over100vcoments one is alsmortv200.[1] [2] For me the major issue is that the atheists are insisting on their usual dichotomy of natural, everything physical that exists vs. Supernatural (SN) everything not sanctioned by their belief system, their reading of science.  I did my thing which I have done here on the true Christian notion of the Supernatural.  I point out that their ideas of SN in so far as they use that to argue against the validity of Christianity are essentially a straw man argument; not only do some of them not care they seem not to understand it. In this post I will try to clarify my view, and deal with difficulties in their view (at least the view Badly Bowen puts forth).

My view is predicated upon the notion that the original concept of SN was about God's higher nature forming the realm of Grace and and drawing the natural tendencies of human nature toward it culminating mystical experience and transformational power. I further argue that the French philosophs so rebelled against scholasticism that they created their own counterfit SN and then juxtaposed to the natural realm, In making it about realms and natures miraculous power they changed the whole set up. For various historical reasons that became the predominate view. a good history of science that traces the fall of scholasticism and the triumph of anti-clerical scientism in the enlightenment is told by Basil Wiley.[3] In the enlightenment the harmonious relation of nature to Grace was torn asunder and we wound up with a biphercated reality .The believers took the equivocal side to preserve sovereignty of God. The secularists and liberals have taken the univocal side making God either non existent or part of nature.[4]

I first argued that the term  supernatural originally, web coined by Dionysius the Areiopegite  referred to mystical experience. That is born out in several places but one of the best is a summary of the history or the word found in the work o9f an anthropologist, Benson Saler.[5] He is a secular thinker and probably couldn't care less about the implications of Christian theology. But he does demonstrate that the word originally was not indicative of a metaphysical dichotomy. A couple of reactions to Saler's piece are alarming, one of them thought he was affirming the atheist dichotomy at the end of the piece,

Even the Saler source above that Joe referenced as supporting his definition of supernatural uses a "Western" definition of supernatural similar to yours to contrast it to the primitive definition of supernatural. I find this all a bit creepy....Don't bother reading the whole thing, just go to the concluding Section V. The entire paper is irrelevant to this discussion... as should be expected from Joe.[6]

What he really says is that the Christian dichotomy is too specific to Christian theology to impose upon other cultures as a standard category for purpose of anthropological work.The overall paper is about weather or not Western category of SN can be found in other cultures."...Hallowell warns us that 'a thoroughgoing objective approach to the study of cultures cannot be achieved solely by projecting upon those cultures categorical abstractions derived from Western thought." So he reveals the history of the term in order to show that it is derived form Western thought.[7] What he says in Section V that was cited: "The question now arises as to which understanding of our Western dichotomy of natural-supernatural we might employ in our field research. The Technical Christian distinction bweteen the oder of Grace wnd the order of nature is decidedly too narrow and too tehologically specific to prove of much use."[8] He winds up saying "the SN then is our culture bound category for anything that transcends the immanently principled operation of nature as we understand them."[9] He's talking about using the cultural construct in anthropology he is not proclaiming Christin doctrine false, only unsuitable for anthropological field work.

It would be too simplistic to say that the Christian SN is just mystical experience. I have said things that sound that why due to short handing it for brevity sake. My view is a bit more complex than that, Rather than a transcendent realm the realm of Grace is God;'s higher nature, It isn't removed from the world it's just better. God's grace raises humans to a higher level for consciousness through mystical e and that is the practical and empirical aspect that can be demonstrated at least  in so far as the kind of experience said to be mystical goes. Proving it comes from God is another matter. It is because Super nature is the ground and end of nature that it doe elevate human consciousness. Nature is life from life, the physical world of birth and flesh and blood. The two realms are not opposed to open other, The SN is in the natural as well as beyond it. There is a two sidedness but not a real dualism. This is the view of Eugene R. Fairweather and of Moiaathiaas Jospeh Scheebn before him.[10][11] I have
summarized these views.


Teleology in nature is not part of the modern secular intellectual marketplace. Understand why scientists cant or shouldn't try to includes teleology  in discussion of nature, even though Newton and Boyle did. It's the same reason why historians can't list miracles as reasons for historical events. Reasons for the Fall of Rome: too much led I their water, ran out of grain, empire was stretched thin, God was against them. But theology is a different matter. We can talk teleology (that doesn't necessarily mean miracles). So the notion ground and end of nature is not unthinkable in post modernity. That is Fairweather's thesis. The harmonious relation of nature and Grace  nature bending toward Grace as ground and end, and "nature" primarily means human nature. In physical nature we might think about fine turning or anthropic principle. We might think about consciousness. Supernatural is not a miracle it's not outside nature it's the driver that brings order out of chaos and makes the moral universe bend toward Justice. It makes human nature bend toward God.

It has been alleged that no one thinks that way today, Martin Luther King did. "The arch of the Moral universe is Long but it bends toward Justice. [12] The places where we will really see this analogical view (or ontological SN--my terms)  is in the orthodox Church and some kinds of Catholics. [13] There is a concept that is essentially the same view of harmony but through embarrassment hides the SN in the univocal. That is the theologically liberal univocal view of the 20th century. Catholic theologian Carl Rahner: "The supernatural existential refers to God’s free fulfillment of a human person’s openness to being through God’s 'self gift' of grace. Rahner holds that we have been created from the very beginning for the grace of God’s self communication. For Rahner, the supernatural existential indicates 'the permeation of our existence by the gratuitous divine self- communication even prior to human response.....'"[14] I also cou8nt Paul Tillich in this view, Even though he rejected the term SN I think he clearly approved of the view of Fairweather. I think it was the common misconception to which he objected. [15] We see the same univocal tendency in John Macquarrie. Like Tillich he's hiding the divine in the natural but leaves it a connection with what the modernists vie would call "SN" through the juxtaposition of finite to infinite, rather than nature and SN. [16] The difference in the liberal view as portrayed here is that I want to preserve the original language of the faith and call it SN, they want ot hide the SN in the natural.


I will Give the atheists this much: the enlightenment univocal view became so pervasive that that';sall we see. Evemdm moderm lberal theologions like Tillicjh who have the Concept ofGrce owrlkking in natjre an d nature respmskingf to the  higherlevel opf Grace couch it in temvother than sup[ernatual or lean to to the univoclo lside. They have the right concept butthey repudiate the term SN because they identify it with the hijack which hads beomce traditional. So really my  work is an attempt at resurrecting the older dcocpet bur the structurevof it is there invmodern liberal tehology.
 
In his exposition on the Meaning of SN part 2 Bradly Bowen defines both SN and natural in that order. will start with Natural first. He takes definition from American Heritage Dictionary:

NATURAL

 Present in or produced by nature.
Of, pertaining to, or concerning nature: natural science.
 Conforming to the usual or ordinary course of nature: a natural death.
a. Not aquired; inherent: Love of power is natural to man. b. Having a particular character by nature: a natural leader.
Free from affectation or artificiality; spontaneous.
Not altered, treated, or disguised: natural coloring.
Faithfully representing nature or life.
Expected and accepted: Marriage seemed the natural and logical sequence to love.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/06/06/what-does-supernatural-mean-part2/#disqus_thread

The first definition references natural science. So clearly this is based upon the post enlightenment dichotomy that recognizes modern science. This definition of nature presupposed a contrast to Supernature. His definition of supernatural:

SUPERNATURAL
Of or pertaining to existence outside the natural world.
Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural laws; miraculous.
Of or pertaining to a deity.

(The American Heritage Dictionary, 2nd College edition, p.1221, emphasis added)All three definitions seem relevant, at least initially.  However, the third definition is clearly too narrow, taken by itself.  When I use the word “supernatural” I have in mind more than just God and the attributes of God, and more than just dieties in general.  I have in mind, for example: ESP, angels, magic, ghosts, levitation, demons, mind-reading, and souls, in addition to God and the finite gods of polytheistic religions.Note that “supernatural” in the first and second senses is defined in terms of the word “natural”, specifically in terms of the phrases “the natural world” and “natural laws”.  The third definition of “supernatural” is the only definition that does not use the word “natural” as part of the definition.[17]

•  This definition assumes the dichotomy. The second definition asserts that SN is in some violation of an established order. rather than being the established order that created the called "natural" which would be the case under the Christian view. Of course the reference to "a deity" is in complete opposition to the Christian  concept of God; not one of many but the one and only. The biphercastion is built into the concept. Bradly recognizes the narrowness of the third definition by itself.oe..
•  
•  
• sources

 

[1]Bradly Bown What doesSN mean p1Junev3, 2016
• • une 3, 2016 by Bradley Bowen

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/06/03/what-does-supernatural-mean/#disqus_thread

[ 2] Bradly Bowen, "What Does Supernatural Mean part 2," Secular Oupost (June 6, 2016) blog URL:http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/06/06/what-does-supernatural-mean-part2/#disqus_thread

[3]  Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background: Studies On the Idea of Nature In the Thought of the Period. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941.

[4] fairwearher

•  

[5] Benson Saler, “Supernatural as a Western Category,” Ethos, Vol. 5, issue 1, first published online 28 Oct., 2009, 31-53 35. PDF URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/eth.1977.5.1.02a00040/pdf (accessed 1/25/2016).


[6] Wanderobo Axolotl  in Bowen part 2 op cit commemt

[7] Saler, op cit setion I

[8] Ibid, section V

[9] Ibid

[10] Eugene R. Fairweather, “Christianity and the Supernatural,” in New Theology no.1. New York: Macmillian, Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman ed. 1964. 235-256, 239.

[11 ] Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009 (paperback) originally unpublished 1856.

[12] Martian Luther King, "I Have  a Dream"

[13] The non Orthodox: Orthodox Teaching on 'Christians Outside the
church. Salisbury: Regina Orthdo Press, 1999, on line excerpt
http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/non-orthodox_ch2.pdf  access 6/8/2016

The Orthodox Distinguish between God;'s essence and energies, his corresponds to transcendent and Immanent, The only distinction they recognize between Supernatural and natural is God is the Supernatural and all else is natural. "The Orthodox Church knows no such supernatural  order between God and the created world ...save that between created and uncreated,." adding no created supernatusl exists.

[14] William V. Dych, “Theology in a New Key,” in Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J., editor,

 A World of Grace: An Introduction to theThemes and Foundations of Karl Rahner’s Theology,

(New York, NY: The Seabury Press, 1980), p. 13

[15] Joseph Hinman,  "Was paul Tillich Anti-Supernatural" The Religious A Priori, On line Resource URL
http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2013/01/photobucket.html  accessed 6/7/2016


[16] Vernon L. Purdy, The Christology of John Macquarie, Peter Lang, 2009, 142.

on google books
https://books.google.com/books?id=lXgUW4T-fzEC&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142&dq=theology+john+macquarrie+view+of+supernatural&source=bl&ots=kLcTrZAbsE&sig=1GPBTfR3VYSdxmt60QvgVRinNpc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzj-_57ZbNAhVC74MKHWPsDlsQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=theology%20john%20macquarrie%20view%20of%20supernatural&f=false

[17] Bowen Op Cit part 2




 

The True Christian concept of the Supernatural part 3

Empirical experience of The Supernatural



The Trace of God,  by Joseph Hinman. This book proves the truth of mystical experience. The article you are about to read is part 3 in an article that proves that the Christian concept of the SN is mystical experience, not ghosts and demons and psychic powers. Thus atheists are attacking the srong concept.

Scheeben deals with the distinction between natural and supernatural faith. Throughout his writings we see this typified in terms of the tendency of the power of God to elevate humanity to a higher spiritual level. This means consciousness as well as habit. He speaks of “supernatural effects,” the effect that the pull of the supernatural has upon the natural. This is why it’s valid to think of the supernatural as an ontology, it’s a description of reality, or what is. Empirically that description tends toward the realization of human consciousness reaching to a higher level as a result of certain kinds of experiences. Scheeben expresses this in terms of “higher nature.” Super nature is the higher nature to which human nature is being elevated.

If the lower nature is raised in all of these respects to the level of a higher nature, and especially if this nature modifies the lower nature so deeply and affects it so powerfully that the limits of possibility are reached; if God, purest light and mightiest fire, wishes thoroughly to permeate his creature with his energy, to flood it with brightness and warmth to transform it into his own splendor, to make the creature like the father of spirits and impart to it the fullness of his own divine life, if I say, the entire being of the soul is altered in the deepest recesses and in all its ramifications to the very last, not by annihilation, but by exaltation and transfiguration, then we can affirm that a new higher nature has come to the lower nature, because it has been granted a participation in the essence of him to whom the higher nature properly belongs.[27]

 He seeks in one point of his work to resolve a fine point of difficulty between the Thomist-Molinist dichotomy. Scheeben didn’t like dichotomies and thus seeks a third way. His solution is to see the natural as a mirror of the divine. The dichotomy deals with predestination, grace and free will. That’s not the issue I want to get off into. For Scheeben the authority of God is the sole formal object of faith. Thus faith is divine both in its source and object.[28] According to this position faith is neither the result of rational self interest nor a consequence of the human spirit. We must not mistake the manifestation in experience for the motive of faith. Faith is the result of obedience to the drawing power and call of God.[29] Nature (Greek Physis, Latin natura) is the realm of life from life, according to Scheeben. Super nature is the overarching principle toward which nature strives:

The whole point is that the life of the children of God is directed to such specific objects and ends as cannot be striven for or attained, at least in a way that corresponds to their loftiness, except by acts of a supernatural perfection, that is, of a perfection unattainable by nature, —in other words, by acts which are kindred and similar to the proper life of God in its loftiness.[30]

We can see in his answers to the Thoamsit/Molinist issue the basis of the claim that Super nature is the power of God to rise us to a higher level. This is how Schebeen construed it. In summarizing Murry speaks of “power which flows from the new nature,” 

That is his starting point(16). One conclusion follows immediately: the new powers which flow from the new nature must themselves be “an image of the divine vital powers”(17), i.e. the specific perfection of the divine vital powers must reflect itself in their working. That is Scheeben’s “Grundanschauung”, on which rests all his theorizing about supernatural acts. In a word, to the divinization of man’s nature corresponds a divinization of his activity(18). And Scheeben is occupied wholly in drawing out the nature of this divinization and its consequences. The immediate consequence, in which I am here interested, is that man’s divinized activity must be directed to objects of the specifically divine order. The essence of Scheeben’s thought is revealed in this sufficiently characteristic passage:[31]

 The passage in Scheeben to which he refers:

If we have truly become partakers in the divine nature, and by this supernature have become most intimately akin to the divine nature.... then we are taken up into the sphere of its life; then the Godhead itself in its immediacy and in its own proper essence as it is in itself becomes the object of our activity. Then we shall know God Himself, illuminated by His light, without the mirror of creatures; then we shall love God immediately in Himself, no longer as the Creator of our nature, but as One Who communicates His own nature to us, —penetrated as we are by His fire, and made akin to Him in His divine eminence . . . In a word, if we become partakers of the divine nature, our life and our activity must be specifically similar to the divine. To this end it must’ have the same specific, formal, characteristic object as the divine activity has.[32

 Murray summarizes again:

This one passage, out of many(20), is sufficient to show how the theory of the supernatural object enters into Scheeben’s system, namely as a consequence of (or if you wish, as a postulate for the completion of) his favorite parallelism between the divine life of God Himself and the life of grace in His creature(21). That parallelism suggests the formula that man’s supernatural activity is “an image of the divine activity”, and this formula in turn commands on the one hand the introduction of a supernatural object (i.e. “God as He is in Himself”), and on the other hand dictates the consistent use of the term “immediate” to characterize the nature of the union with God that is effected by supernatural knowledge and love(22). In this last detail, — that supernatural activity unites the soul immediately to God, — Scheeben’s theory culminates. The idea appealed immensely to him, though practically speaking it merely means that “God as He is in Himself” is the immediate object of supernatural activity. Its contrary is that natural activity effects no immediate union with God, since it reaches God only through the medium of creatures, and not “as He is in Himself”[33]

In all of these descriptions we see one standard concept: that supernature is a life, an experience, an inner relation between the divine and human nature. He says supernture is that which we partake of divine life. Human nature is elevated to the higher level by supernature and this primarily the way Scheeben speaks of supernature. This is what supernature is, the power of God to elevate to a higher level. There is an indication form what is said that “the supernatural” is a level of being above the realm of the natural. That must be the case because the power of God to elevate would surely be centered upon a higher level than the natural. That doesn’t mean that we are free to associate the supernatural with psychic powers and ghosts and unexplained phenomena and anything “x-files” like. The sense that the supernatural is above the nature is an implication of the ontology; the ground and end of the natural would sure be on some higher level in a sense. The more important aspect that all of these writers speak of is “participation” in divine life. Shceeben speaks directly of supernature just that, the divine life in which we are elevated to participate.



The important aspect of all of this in relation to science is that super nature is not some juxtaposed belief in the unseen that has no analogy in the empirical. The experience of being raised to a higher level through contact with the divine life is clearly empirical. It may be a matter of interpretation as to the cause of the effects, but the effects of what is called “religious experience” are certainly empirical. It’s not hard to link those experiences with the divine; the content of them is that of God and the divine in relation to the world. This is what most of those who experiences these things think they experienced.


Atheists segregate reality into realms of natural and supernatural. They so construct the situation as to screen out any sort of evidence for supernatural on the basis that such evidence would have to be supernatural. Pod cast: “Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling discuss whether there can ever be evidence for the supernatural in an unmoderated, unrehearsed armchair discussion. The event was sponsored by the British Humanist Association, and organized as a part of Oxford Think Week by the Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanists (OxASH) in conjunction with Oxford Humanists, Oxford Skeptics in the Pub and Oxford Sea of Faith.”[34] The major idea expressed is that any evidence for supernatural must be natural therefore can’t really be of any value. The point being that no evidence for supernatural could ever exist because it would have to be supernatural but it can’t be so because we have no evidence to prove that it exists. That’s actually circular reasoning, any evidence that would count against my view is automatically wrong because it counts against my view, therefore, the other sides is wrong because they have no evidence; if it’s not possible to have evidence then why demand any? The assumption here is that supernatural is an unwelcome visitor crashing into a party given by nature at which it’s not welcome. In reality, however, the experiences of which Dawkins writes so fondly, a strange love for nature growing though a child’s fascination with bugs in the grass, is actually a certain type of supernatural.


Richard Dawkins writes about quasi religious experiences of scientists and an extrovertive mystical experience of a Priest who was once one of his teachers, he then builds upon this in undertaking to explain the nature of religion:

An Anglican clergyman, one of my teachers of whom I was fond, told me of the never-forgotten instant that triggered his own calling. As a boy, he was lying prone in a field, his face buried in the grass. He suddenly became preternaturally aware of the tangled stems and roots as a whole new world, the world of ants and beetles and, though he may not have been aware of them, soil bacteria and other micro-organisms by the billions. At that moment the micro-world of the soil seemed to swell and become one with the universe as a whole, and with the soul of the boy contemplating them. He interpreted the experience in religious terms and it eventually led him to the priesthood.[35]

 This is actually a supernatural experience. He identified it as a mystical experience “Much the same mystic feeling is common among scientists…” Yet he places the mystical on the naturalistic side of the dichotomy. In Dichotomizing between what he calls “Einsteinian religion” and “supernatural” religion he consistently identifies quasi mystical aspects with the “Einsteninian.” That’s because we in modern times are led to think of SN as magical thinking, irrational “lala land,” while become more accepting of mystical experience as a naturalistic aspect of consciousness. He shows this in his dichotomy:

 Much unfortunate misunderstanding is caused by failure to distinguish what might be called Einsteinian religion from supernatural religion. The last words of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, "For then we should know the mind of God", are notoriously misunderstood. Ursula Goodenough's The Sacred Depths of Nature clearly shows that she is just as much of an atheist as I am. Yet she goes to church regularly, and there are numerous passages in her book which seem to be almost begging to be taken out of context and used as ammunition for supernaturalist religion. The present Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, goes to church as an 'unbelieving Anglican', 'out of loyalty to the tribe'. He does not have any supernatural beliefs, but shares exactly the sense of wonder which the universe provokes in the other scientists I have mentioned. There are many intellectual atheists who proudly call themselves Jews, and observe Jewish rites, mostly out of loyalty to an ancient tradition but also because of a confusing (in my view) willingness to label as 'religion' the pantheistic sense of wonder which many of us share.[36]

The proper term for what he calls “Einstein religion” is “extrovertive mystical experience.” “When any experience includes sense-perceptual, somatosensory, or introspective content, we may say it is an extrovertive experience. There are, then, mystical extrovertive experiences, as in one's mystical consciousness of the unity of nature overlaid onto one's sense perception of the world, as well as non-unitive numinous extrovertive experiences, as when experiencing God's presence when gazing at a snowflake.”[37] It is just as supernatural as any other kind. He is assuming that it's “naturalistic” because he assumes that SN is only other worldly and only involved with a higher realm. He has no data and no empirical basis in study of religious experience to set up this dichotomy.

So my argument is that supernature is God's transformative power, and “the supernatural” (of or pertaining to supernature) is the experience of that power. Since this can be studied empirically. The actual transformative power has been studied in a huge body of empirical scienjti9fic work that focuses upon religious experience.



The Trace of God, by Joseph Hinman, on Amazon. The 200 studies in this book prove that Mystical experience is real, this article just proved that the original concept of SN is mystical experiemce. Therefore, SN is real.

[27] Maithias Jospeh Scheeben quoted in Fairweather (239-240). Fairwether fn Scheeben the version he uses. M.J. Scheeben, Nature and Grace, St. Lewis: Herder, 1954, 30.

[28] Avery Dulles, S.J. An Assurance of Things Hoped for: A Theology of Christian Faith. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 90.

[29]Ibid.

 [30]Scheeben, quoted in Works by John Courtney Murray Chapter II “Natural and supernatural Faith.” Website, Woodstock Theological Center Library. P100 URL: http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/murray/1937-2.htm visited August 14, 2012

Mathias Joseph Scheeben on faith, Doctoral Dissertation of John Courtney Murry

Woodstock Theological Center Library.

This volume in the Toronto Studies in Theology reproduces the doctoral dissertation John Courtney Murray, S.J. (1904-1967) completed in the spring of 1937 at the Gregorian University in Rome. From then until now, the Gregorian University archives contained the original typescript of “Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s Doctrine on Supernatural, Divine Faith: A Critical Exposition”. A carbon-copy was incorporated into the Murray Archives housed by the Woodstock Theological Library in the Special Collections Room of the Joseph Mark Lauinger Library at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. John Courtney Murray eventually published the third chapter, modified and disengaged from its original context (1). The complete, original text is published here for the first time.

URL: http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/Murray/1937.htm

[3] John Courtney Murray summarizing Scheeben, ibid.

[32] Scheeben quoted in Muarry, ibid, p101

[33] Murray, ibid.

[34] James O’Malley, The Pod Delusion “Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling Discuss Evidence for the Supernatural This week At Oxford. 2/23/2011.URL http://poddelusion.chttp://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/356494/jewish/What-Is-the-Supernatural.htmo.uk/blog/2011/02/23/richard-dawkins-ac-grayling-discuss-evidence-for-the-supernatural-at-oxford-thinkweek/ visited 1/23/2012

[35] Richard Dawkins, “Einsteinian or Supernatural” The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, 5/15/2006. on line source URL: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/123-religion-einsteinian-or-supernatural visited 1/23/2012.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Jerome Gellman, "Mysticism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/mysticism />. (accessed 1.25/2016)

The True Christian Concept of The Supernatural Part 2 of 3

Mathias Joseph Scheeben


The Supernatural was something very different than it is now. This is important because that original meaning, which Christian spiritually was predicated upon, is empirically provable and completely naturalistic and can be shown to be real by simple scientific means. We have to understand the original concept, there are two thinkers who tried to restore the concept to it’s original form and we need to listen to what they tried to say. The first one was Matthias Joseph Scheeben (born, 1 March, 1835; died at Cologne, 21 July, 1888.) His major work was Nature and Grace. [17] Scheeben was a mystic who contemplated and studied divine grace and hypostatic union. He was also a greatly accomplished academic and was a fine scholar of scholastic theology. He studied at the Gregorian University at Rome and taught dogmatic theology at the Episcopal seminary


at Cologne. Scheeben was the chief defender of the faith against rationalism in the nineteenth century. The generation after his death ( in Cologne in 1888) regarded him as one of the greatest minds of Catholic thought in his day. He left three major works: Nature and Grace (1861), The Mysteries of Christianity (1865), and the massive yet unfinished Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics. Among his major accomplishnents were defense of Vatican I's defense of infallibility, defense of religious freedom against Bismark's attempt to control the Catholic Church.

His books were repeatedly republished in Germany up into the 1960s and translated into other European languages, including English (the Dogmatics, alas, only in highly truncated form). Since the Second Vatican Council, though, he has mostly been neglected by theological teachers and students who have wrongly imagined the nineteenth-century Catholic tradition to be a period of anti-modern darkness….The Catholic world of a hundred or more years ago was quite right, I think, to see the Cologne seminary professor as perhaps the finest modern Catholic dogmatic theologian. His writings not only yield rare insight into the mysteries of Christian faith, they draw the attentive reader ever more deeply into the mysteries themselves. Scheeben is more important now than he has ever been. He can teach a theological generation that has sold its inestimable birthright how to restore and renew dogmatic theology.[18

The other thinker is Eugene R. Fairweather (2 November 1920-) an Anglican scholar and translator of Church fathers from Ottowa. MA in Philosophy form University of Toronto (1943) Ordained priest in 1944 and became tutor at Trinity college Toronto same year. He studied theology at Union theological seminary and earned his Th.D. in 1949. He had an honorary doctorate from McGill University. At the time he wrote his article “Christianity and the Supernatural” he was editor of the Canadian Journal of Theology and professor of dogmatic theology and ethics at Trinity College, Toronto.[19] Fairweather quotes Scheeben and bases part of his view upon Scheeben’s.



Fairweather’s view of the supernatural is contrary to the notion of two opposing realms, or a dualism. He uses the phrase “two-sidedness,” there is a “two-sidedness” about reality but it’s not a real dualism. The Supernatural is that which is above the natural in a certain sense but it is also working in the natural. There are supernatural effects in the natural realm that make up part of human life. Essentially we can say that “the supernatural” (supernature) is an ontology. Fiarweather doesn’t use that term but that’s essentially what he’s describing. Ontology is a philosophical description of reality. Supernature describes reality in that it is the ground and end of the natural. What that means is unpacked by Fairweather : an ordered relation of means to immediate ends with respect to their final ends. “The Essential structure of the Christian faith has a real two-sidedness about it, which may at first lead the unwary into a dualism and then encourage the attempt to resolve the dualism by an exclusive emphasis upon one or the other [side] of the severed element of complete Christianity.”[20] He explains the ordered relation several times through paring off opposites or supposed opposites: human/divine; immanent/transcendent; realm of Grace/realm of nature. All of these he refers to as “ordered relations.”[21] If this was Derrida we would call them binary oppositions. In calling them “ordered” he is surely saying one is ‘above’ the other in some sense. They are not necessarily oppositions because that’s his whole point, not a true dualism.



Supernature is working in nature. It’s not breaking in unwelcome but is drawing the workings of nature to a higher level. Fairweather describes it as the “ground and end of nature.” In other words it is the basis upon which nature comes to be and the goal toward which nature moves. Now it’s true that science removes the teleological from nature it doesn’t see it as moving toward a goal but that’s because it can’t consider anything beyond its own domain. Science is supposed to be empirical consideration of the natural realm and is practitioners often profess disdain for the metaphysical while inso doing keep a running commentary on metaphysics. Of course modern science become a form of metaphysics by infusing itself with philosophical assumptions and then declaring there is nothing beyond the natural/material realm. That is to say, when it is dominated by secularist ideology that is the direction in which science is cast. Be that as it may, theologically we can take a broader view and we see a goal oriented aspect to the natural. Supernatural effects draw the natural toward supernature. That is to say human nature responds to the calling of God in elevating humans to a higher level of consciousness. There is another example of the ground and end of nature. Fairweather doesn’t give this example, but I think it applies. This is Martin Luther King’s statement about the “arch of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” Nothing in nature bends toward justice, if by “nature” we mean rocks and trees but there is more to the natural realm than just those aspects that science studies. Humans are part of the realm of the natural and it is part of our social world that we understand concepts of justice. Due to our own purposive nature we bend the arch of the moral universe toward justice.



Long before Dionysius spoke of huper hamousios “From an early period the concept of 'that which is above nature’ had been seized upon by Christian Theologians as an appropriate means of stating the core of the gospel...” [22] Origen...[185-254] tells how God raises man above human nature…and makes him change into a better and divine nature.”[23] John Chrysostom (347-407) speaks of humans having received grace “health beauty honor and dignities far exceeding our nature.”[24] That view has persisted even in modern times. “In the West the most concise expression of the idea is to be found in the Leonine prayer ‘grant us to be partakers of his divinity who deigned to become partakers of our humanity.’”[25] “In these and a multitude of patristic texts the essential point is just this, that God, who is essentially supernatural perfects with a perfection beyond creaturely comprehension. Nevertheless, supernature elevates human creatures to a true participation in divine life an indwelling of God in man and man in God.”[26] The important point here is that human nature is being raised to the higher level of divine. We can see this manifests itself through the experience commonly known as “mystical.” That I will take up shortly, First, let’s turn to Scheeben to document further the nature of the supernatural. Supernatural is the power of God to raise us to this higher level.


The Trace of God, by Joseph Hinman, on Amazon. The 200 studies in this book prove that Mystical experience is real, this article just proved that the original concept of SN is mystical experiemce. Therefore, SN is real.



PART 3





Sources

[17] Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009 (paperback) originally unpublished 1856.

[18]  Bruce D. Marshall. “Renewing Dogmatic theology: Mathias Joseph Scheeben Teaches Us the Virtues Theologians Need.” First Things. May 2012. On line version: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/04/renewing-dogmatic-theology accessed 11/8/2013

Bruce D. Marshall is professor of Christian doctrine at Perkins School of Theology.(c) 2012 Institute of Religion and Public Life

[19] Editor’s introduction to Eugene R. Fairweather, “Christianity and the Supernatural,” op.cit.

[20] Ibid, Fairweather,.237.

[21]Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23 ]Fairweather, ibid (239).

[24] ibid

[25] Fairweather quoting Leonine prayer, ibid.

[26] Ibid

Here Fairweather seemsto contradict Saler who says there is no term in the writings of the so called “church fathers” that could be translated as “supernatural” until Cyril and Dionysius, here Fairweather says the Patristic texts God is suernatural. He is back reading the term based up the concept. The term isn't really used by his pre Crylian examples.

The Empirical Supernatural

 

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman writes about the dichotomy between natural and supernatural and how unnecessary it is. He quotes a question ask him form the general public, a question that shows the extent to which supernature has been discredited and slandered:

The supernatural seems irrational, superstitious, archaic and primitive. So far, the natural world has provided explanations for the previously mysterious unknown: social psychology, psychiatry, chemistry, mathematics, biology, medicine, physics, astronomy, geology and history have aided humanity and preserved our mental and physical health and extended our lives.

So why do we refer to G-d to as a supernatural being? Where is the evidence that the supernatural exists, or has any bearing on our lives? Does the word "supernatural" even mean anything, other than "I don't understand this (yet)"?[1]

Here we see several of these misconceptions about the supernatural, not only because it’s linked to superstition, which it clearly has nothing to do with, but also the idea that God is “a supernatural being” (whatever that is) and that there’s no evidence for it, when in reality the evidence everywhere, in the previous article Dawkins gives us a bunch of it, even though he thinks it’s disproving supernatrue. The questioner puts this dichotomy in terms of the known (nature) and the unknown (supernature). The Rabbi’s answer takes off along these very lines; known and unknown. “Superntural” he deduces is based upon whatever doesn’t’ fit the categories of knowledge listed; all of course are scientific categories. That’s the only form of knowledge that atheists will think about or accept. Everything must be scientific or it doesn’t exist. Dawkins concept of a rational form of religion is a scientific (“Einstein”) religion.

The Original Concept of Supernature

            All of these objections assume a certain version of the supernatural. The supernatural has become a catch-all for anything non materialistic or naturalistic that scientistic types want to snub without really having to disprove it. Supernatural today means anything from ghosts, Bigfoot, UFO to psychic powers, and angels and demons and God in heaven. Not so with the original concept. In the early centuries of Christian philosophy the original Greek fathers thought of God as transcendent but they did not necessarily conceive of that as “supernatural.” The Supernatural was something very different then than it is now. This is important because that original meaning, which Christian spiritually was predicated upon, is empirically probable and completely naturalistic and can be shown to be real by simple scientific means. We have to understand the original concept, there are two thinkers who tried to restore the concept to it’s original form and we need to listen to what they tried to say. The first one was Matthias Joseph Scheeben (born, 1 March, 1835; died at Cologne, 21 July, 1888.) His major work was Nature and Grace.[2] Scheeben was a mystic who contemplated and studied divine grace and hypostatic union. He was also of greatly accomplished academically and was a fine scholarly of scholastic theology. He studied at the Gregorian University at Rome and taught dogmatic theology at the Episcopal seminary

at Cologne. Scheeben was the chief defender of the faith against rationalism in the nineteenth century.

In the summer of 1888, Scheeben died in Cologne, having spent most of his fifty-three years teaching dogmatics and moral theology in the archdiocesan seminary there. He was Germany's most persuasive defender of Vatican Fs decision on papal infallibility and an impassioned advocate of religious freedom in the Kulturkampf, Bismarck's determined but finally unsuccessful effort to subject the Catholic Church to the control of his new German state. He was also the author of three major dogmatic works: Nature and Grace (1861), The Mysteries of Christianity (1865), and the massive Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, left unfinished at his death.

The generations that followed Scheeben regarded him as one of the greatest minds of modern Catholic theology. His books were repeatedly republished in Germany up into the 1960s and translated into other European languages, including English (the Dogmatics, alas, only in highly truncated form). Since the Second Vatican Council, though, he has mostly been neglected by theological teachers and students who have wrongly imagined the nineteenth-century Catholic tradition to be a period of antimodern darkness.

The Catholic world of a hundred or more years ago was quite right, I think, to see the Cologne seminary professor as perhaps the finest modern Catholic dogmatic theologian. His writings not only yield rare insight into the mysteries of Christian faith, they draw the attentive reader ever more deeply into the mysteries themselves. Scheeben is more important now than he has ever been. He can teach a theological generation that has sold its inestimable birthright how to restore and renew dogmatic theology.[3]

            The other thinker is Eugene R. Fairweather (2 November 1920-) was Anglican scholar and translator of Church fathers from Ottowa. MA in Philosophy form University of Toronto (1943) Ordained priest in 1944 and became tutor at Trinity college Toronto same year. He studied theology at Union theological seminary and earned his Th.D. in 1949. He had an honorary doctorate from McGill University. At the time he wrote his article “Christianity and the Supernatural” he was editor of the Canadian Journal of Theology and professor of dogmatic theology and ethics at Trinity College, Toronto.[4] Fairweather quotes Scheeben and bases part of his view upon Scheeben’s.

           Fairweather’s view of the supernatural is contrary to the notion of two opossing realms, or a dualism. He uses the phrase “two-sidedness,” there is a “two-sidedness” about reality but it’s not a real dualism. The Supernatural is that which is above the natural in a certain sense but it is also working in the natural. There are supernatural effects which in the natural realm and make up part of human life. Essentially we can that “the supernatural” (supernature) is an ontology. Fiarweather doesn’t use that term but that’s essentially what he’s describing. Ontology is a philological description of reality. Supernature describes reality in that it is the ground and end of the natural. What that means is unpacked by Fairweather to mean that it is an ordered relation of means to immediate ends with respect to their final ends. “The Essential structure of the Christian faith has a real two-sidedness about it, which may at first lead the unwary into a dualism and then encourage the attempt to resolve the dualism by an exclusive emphasis upon one or the other [side] of the severed element of completely Christianity.”[5] He explains the ordered relation several times through paring off opposites or supposed opposites: human/divine; immanent/transcendent; realm of Grace/realm of nature. All of these he refers to as “ordered relations.”[6] If this was Derrida we would call them binary oppositions. In calling them “ordered” he is surely saying one is ‘above’ the other in some sense. They are not necessary oppositions because that’s his whole point, not a true dualism.

            Supernature is working in nature. It’s not breaking in unwelcome but is drawing the workings of nature to a higher level. Fairweather describes it as the “ground and end of nature.” In other words is the basis upon which nature comes to be and the goal toward which nature moves. Now it’s true that science removes the teleological from nature it doesn’t see it as moving toward a goal but that’s because it can’t consider anything beyond its own domain. Science is supposed to be empirical consideration of the natural realm and is supposed to keep its nose out of the business of commentary on metaphysics. Of course modern science does the opposite it become a form of metaphysics by infusing itself with philosophical assumptions and then declaring there is nothing beyond the natural/material realm. That is to say, when it is dominated by secularist concerns that are the direction science is put in by ideological interests. Be that as it may, theological we can take a broader view and we see a goal oriented aspect to the natural. Supernatural effects draw the natural toward supernature. That is to say human nature responds to the calling of God in elevating humans to a higher level of consciousness. Another example of the ground and end of nature that Fairweather doesn’t give, but I like to use, is Martin Luther King’s statement about the arch of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. Nothing in nature bends toward justice, if by “nature” we mean rocks and trees but there more to the natural realm than just those aspects that science studies. Humans are part of the realm of the natural and it’s part of our social world that we understand concepts of justice. Due to our own purposive nature we bend the arch of the moral universe toward justice.

            The term Supernatural (SN) comes to us from Aquinas.[7] He gets it from John Scotus Erigena and Burgundio of Pisa, who in turn take it from Pseudo-Dionysius and John of Damascus.[8] The latter used the adverbial form Supernaturaliter. This is coming from the Greek hyperphuos.[9] “From an early period the concept of ‘that which is above nature’ had been seized upon by Christian Theologians as an appropriate means of stating the core of the gospel, so far example, Origen tells how God raises man above human nature…and makes him change into a better and divine nature.”[10] John Chrysostom speaks of speaks of humans having received grace “health beauty honor and dignities far exceeding our nature.”[11] “In the West the most concise expression of the idea is to be found in the Leonine prayer ‘grant us to be partakers of his divinity who deigned to become  partakers of our humanity.’”[12] “In these and a multitude of patristic texts the essential point is just this, that God, who is essentially superntrual perfects with a perfection beyond creaturely comprehension. Nevertheless elevates human creatures to a true participation in divine life an indwelling of God in man and man in God.”[13] The important point here is that human nature is being raised to the higher level of divine. We can see this manifests itself through the experience commonly known as “mystical.” That I will take up shortly, First, let’s turn to Scheeben to document further that is the nature of the supernatural. Supernatural is the power of God to raise us to this higher level.

            Scheeben deals with the distinction between natural and supernatural faith. Throughout his writings we see this typified in terms of the tendency of the power of God to elevate humanity to a higher spiritual level. This means consciousness as well as habit. He speaks of “supernatural effects,” the effect that the pull of the supernatural has upon the natural. This is why it’s valid to think of the supernatural as an ontology, it’s a description of reality, or what is. Empirically that description tends toward the realization of human consciousness reaching to a higher level as a result of certain kinds of experiences. Scheeben expresses this in terms of “higher nature.” Super nature is the higher nature to which human nature is being elevated.

If the lower nature is raised in all of these respects to the level of a higher nature, and especially if this nature modifies the lower nature so deeply and affects it so powerfully that the limits of possibility are reached; if God, purest light and mightiest fire, wishes through to permeate his creature with his energy, to flood it with brightness and warmth to transform it into his own splendor, to make the creature like the father of spirits and impart to it the fullness of his own divine life, if I say, the entire being of the soul is altered in the deepest recesses and in all its ramifications to the very last, not by annihilation, but by exaltation and transfiguration. Then we can affirm that a new higher nature has come to the lower nature, because it has been granted a participation in the essence of him to whom the higher nature properly belongs.[14]

He seeks in one point of his work to resolve a fine point of difficulty between the Thomist-Molinist dicthotomy. Scheeben didn’t like dichotomies and thus seeks a third way. His solution is to see the natural as a mirror of the divine. The dichotomy deals with predestination, grace and free will. That’s not the issue I don’t want to get off into that. For Scheeben the authority of God is the sole formal object of faith. Thus faith is divine both in its source and object.[15] According to this position faith is neither the result of rational self interest nor a consequence of the human spirit. We must not mistake the manifestation in experience for the motive of faith. Faith is the result of obedience to the drawing power and call of God.[16] Nature (Greek Physis, Latin natura) is the realm of life from life, according to Scheeben. Super nature is the overarching principle toward which nature strives

The whole point is that the life of the children of God is directed to such specific objects and ends as cannot be striven for or attained, at least in a way that corresponds to their loftiness, except by acts of a supernatural perfection, that is, of a perfection unattainable by nature, —in other words, by acts which are kindred and similar to the proper life of God in its loftiness.[17]

We can see in his answers to the Thoamsit/Molinist issue the basis of the claim that Super nature is the power of God to rise us to a higher level. This is how Schebeen construed it. In summarizing Murry speaks of  “power which flow from the new nature,”

that is his starting point(16). One conclusion follows immediately: the new powers which flow from the new nature must themselves be “an image of the divine vital powers”(17), i.e. the specific perfection of the divine vital powers must reflect itself in their working. That is Scheeben’s “Grundanschauung”, on which rests all his theorizing about supernatural acts. In a word, to the divinization of man’s nature corresponds a divinization of his activity(18). And Scheeben is occupied wholly in drawing out the nature of this divinization and its consequences. The immediate consequence, in which I am here interested, is that man’s divinized activity must be directed to objects of the specifically divine order. The essence of Scheeben’s thought is revealed in this sufficiently characteristic passage:[18]

The passage in Scheeben to which he refers:

If we have truly become partakers in the divine nature, and by this supernature have become most intimately akin to the divine nature.... then we are taken up into the sphere of its life; then the Godhead itself in its immediacy and in its own proper essence as it is in itself becomes the object of our activity. Then we shall know God Himself, illuminated by His light, without the mirror of creatures; then we shall love God immediately in Himself, no longer as the Creator of our nature, but as One Who communicates His own nature to us, —penetrated as we are by His fire, and made akin to Him in His divine eminence . . . In a word, if we become partakers of the divine nature, our life and our activity must be specifically similar to the divine. To this end it must’ have the same specific, formal, characteristic object as the divine activity has.[19]

Murray summarizes again:

This one passage, out of many(20), is sufficient to show how the theory of the supernatural object enters into Scheeben’s system, namely as a consequence of (or if you wish, as a postulate for the completion of) his favorite parallelism between the divine life of God Himself and the life of grace in His creature(21). That parallelism suggests the formula that man’s supernatural activity is “an image of the divine activity”, and this formula in turn commands on the one hand the introduction of a supernatural object (i.e. “God as He is in Himself”), and on the other hand dictates the consistent use of the term “immediate” to characterize the nature of the union with God that is effected by supernatural knowledge and love(22). In this last detail, — that supernatural activity unites the soul immediately to God, — Scheeben’s theory culminates. The idea appealed immensely to him, though practically speaking it merely means that “God as He is in Himself” is the immediate object of supernatural activity. Its contrary is that natural activity effects no immediate union with God, since it reaches God only through the medium of creatures, and not “as He is in Himself”[20]

            In all of these descriptions we see one standard concept: that supernature is a life, an experience, an inner relation between the divine and human nature. He says supernture is that which we partake of divine life. Human nature is elevated to the higher level by super nature and this primarily the way Scheeben speaks of supernature. This is what super nature is, the power of God to elevate to a higher level. There is an indication form what is said that “the supernatural” is a level of being above he realm of the natural. That must be the case because the power of God to elevate would surely be centered upon a higher level than then natural. That doesn’t mean that we are free to associate the supernatural with psychic powers and ghosts and unexplained phenomena and anything “x-files” like. The sense that the supernatural is above the nature is an implication of the ontology; the ground and end of the natural would sure be on some higher level in a sense. The more important aspect that all of these writers speak of is “participation” in divine life. Shceeben speaks directly of super nature just that, the divine life in which we are elevated to participate in.

            The important aspect of all of this in relation to science is that super nature is not some juxtaposed belief in the unseen that has no analogy in the empirical. The experience of being raised to a higher level through contact with the divine life is clearly empirical. It may be a matter of interpretation as to the cause of the effects, but the effects of what is called “religious experience” are certainly empirical. It’s not hard to link those experiences with the divine; the content of them is that of God and the divine relation to the world. This is what most of those who experiences these things think they experienced.

---

[1] a reader writing to Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, “What is the Supernatural?” Chabad.org Essentials. Blog URL: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/356494/jewish/What-Is-the-Supernatural.htm  visited 1/23/2012

[2] Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009 (paperback) originally unpublished  1856.

[3] Bruce D. Marshall. “Renewing Dogmatic theology.” News Edge. Blog URL: http://dialog.newsedge.com/portal.asp?site=2007100814443105593225&searchfolderid=pg2007100814522209759333&block=default&portlet=ep&nzesm=on&display=Religious+Cults&action=sitetopics&mode=realtime&nzenb=left&criteria=[topic%3Dcults]&searchID=730376&datetime=[t-minus%3D7]&hdlaction=story&storyid=[storyid=zFhV9A4ingKfyJKkM7SYF60h7bzyuSst6cpLFPeF_KF10rs2TkU8gQnIhJL0BsKdSpTF6QIOR0rsVM2GIwVDyw**]&rtcrdata=on&epname=EFORE&

Visitied August 14, 2012. Bruce D. Marshall is professor of Christian doctrine at Perkins School of Theology.(c) 2012 Institute of Religion and Public Life

[4] Editor’s introduction to Eugene R. Fairweather, “Christianity and the Supernatural,” in New Theology no.1.  New York: Macmillian, Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman ed. 1964. 235-256.

[5] Ibid. 237

[6] ibid

[7] Fairweather,ibid, 239

[8] ibid

[9] ibid

Pseudo-Dionysius Ep 4, ad Caium (PG 3:1072)

[10] Fairweather, ibid (239).

[11] ibid

[12] Fairweather quoting Leonine prayer, ibid.

[13] ibid

[14] Maithias Jospeh Scheeben quoted in Fairweather (239-240). Fairwether fn Scheeben the version he uses. M.J. Scheeben, Nature and Grace, St. Lewis: Herder, 1954, 30.

[15] Avery Dulles, S.J. An Assurance of Things Hoped for: A Theology of Christian Faith. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 90.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Scheeben, quoted in Works by John Courtney Murray Chapter II “Natural and supernatural Faith.” Website, Woodstock Theological Center Library. P100 URL: http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/murray/1937-2.htm  visited August 14, 2012

Mathias Joseph Scheeben on faith, Doctoral Dissertation of John Courtney Murry

Woodstock Theological Center Library.

This volume in the Toronto Studies in Theology reproduces the doctoral dissertation John Courtney Murray, S.J. (1904-1967) completed in the spring of 1937 at the Gregorian University in Rome. From then until now, the Gregorian University archives contained the original typescript of “Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s Doctrine on Supernatural, Divine Faith: A Critical Exposition”. A carbon-copy was incorporated into the Murray Archives housed by the Woodstock Theological Library in the Special Collections Room of the Joseph Mark Lauinger Library at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. John Courtney Murray eventually published the third chapter, modified and disengaged from its original context (1). The complete, original text is published here for the first time.

URL: http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/Murray/1937.htm

[18] John Courtney Murray summarizing Scheeben, ibid.

[19] Scheeben quoted in Muarry, ibdid, p101

[20] Murray, ibid.