by jimwalton » Wed Dec 06, 2023 10:15 am
No, I'm not saying that. Certainly in the ancient Near East there was no line of demarcation between the natural and the supernatural. "Natural" and "supernatural" are modern categories, not biblical ones. In the ancient world, the deities were never distinguished from the ways things normally work.
In our modern world we don't still think that way, and neither do I. To be clear, what I was saying is that sometimes God's work in the world is so natural as to be indistinguishable from what we call natural events, so much so that one could never say that a natural explanation, if there were one, would supersede a supernatural one.
No, I'm not saying that. Certainly in the ancient Near East there was no line of demarcation between the natural and the supernatural. "Natural" and "supernatural" are modern categories, not biblical ones. In the ancient world, the deities were never distinguished from the ways things normally work.
In our modern world we don't still think that way, and neither do I. To be clear, what I was saying is that sometimes God's work in the world is so natural as to be indistinguishable from what we call natural events, so much so that one could never say that a natural explanation, if there were one, would supersede a supernatural one.