It Is Better to Be Super!

Why Supernatural Religion Perfects Rather Than Destroys Natural Religion

Why would anyone choose the "supernatural" over the "natural"? In our scientific age, "supernatural" often sounds like superstition—something that contradicts reason and evidence. But what if the supernatural actually perfects and elevates the natural rather than opposing it? What if the highest form of religion integrates both reason and revelation rather than choosing one over the other?

This is the Catholic claim: that supernatural religion doesn't abandon natural religion but fulfills it. Understanding this distinction helps explain not only what makes Christianity unique, but also why different Christian traditions emphasize faith and reason in different proportions.

Natural Religion: What Reason Can Discover

Natural religion represents what human reason and experience can discover about God apart from any special divine revelation. It's "natural" not because it's about nature-worship, but because it uses our natural human faculties—reason, observation, and moral intuition.

Think of our earlier exploration of God's existence and attributes. Through philosophical argument alone, we can discover:

• That God exists as the first cause and unmoved mover
• That God must be infinite, simple, omnipotent, and perfectly good
• That we have rational souls ordered toward truth and goodness
• That objective moral laws exist and point toward a divine lawgiver

This isn't a complete religion, but it's a solid foundation. Natural religion gives us what philosophers call "natural theology"—real knowledge about God gained through human reason working on the evidence of creation.

Many great thinkers have built impressive religious systems on natural religion alone. Ancient philosophers like Aristotle and Cicero, Enlightenment deists like Voltaire, and modern philosophers of religion work primarily within natural religion's boundaries.

The Limits of Natural Religion

But natural religion, however noble, faces inherent limitations:

Limited Knowledge: Reason can tell us that God exists and must be perfectly good, but it cannot tell us God's personal name, His inner life as Trinity, or His specific plan for human salvation.

Limited Power: Reason can show us moral obligations, but it cannot give us the strength to fulfill them consistently. We know we should love our enemies, but we struggle to do so.

Limited Relationship: Natural religion establishes God as ultimate truth and goodness, but cannot establish intimate, personal relationship with Him. We know God exists, but we don't know if He knows us individually or cares about our specific struggles.

Limited Hope: Natural religion points toward some form of afterlife based on moral desert, but offers no certainty about forgiveness, redemption, or the ultimate defeat of evil and death.

Supernatural Religion: When God Speaks

Supernatural religion occurs when God reveals Himself beyond what natural reason can discover. It's "supernatural" not because it's anti-natural, but because it comes from above nature—from God's free decision to communicate directly with humanity.

Supernatural religion includes everything natural religion contains, but adds:

• Divine Revelation: God's self-disclosure through prophets, Scripture, and ultimately through Christ
• Revealed Mysteries: Truths about God's inner life (Trinity), His plan of salvation, and our ultimate destiny
• Sacramental Grace: Divine power to live according to revealed truth
• Personal Relationship: God known not just as distant first cause but as loving Father

Crucially, supernatural religion doesn't contradict natural religion—it fulfills and elevates it. When Jesus reveals God as Trinity, this doesn't contradict reason's discovery of God's unity; it reveals the divine unity as infinitely richer than reason alone could imagine.

The Faith and Reason Spectrum

Different Christian traditions navigate the relationship between natural and supernatural religion in various ways, creating what we might call a "faith and reason spectrum":

The Rationalist Extreme: Reason Alone

Some groups effectively reduce Christianity to natural religion enhanced by additional rational speculation. Historical Gnosticism exemplified this approach, treating salvation as a matter of acquiring secret knowledge through mystical reasoning rather than receiving divine grace.

Modern forms include:

• Liberal theology that reduces revelation to human religious insight
• Attempts to "prove" all Christian doctrines through philosophy alone
• Treating faith as merely provisional belief pending rational demonstration

The Problem: This approach truncates Christianity, losing the genuine supernatural dimension that makes personal relationship with God possible.

The Fideist Extreme: Faith Alone

The opposite extreme treats faith as completely independent from reason, sometimes even opposing it. This approach emphasizes:

• Pure trust in God's word without rational foundation
• Suspicion of philosophical theology as potentially corrupting
• Emphasis on personal spiritual experience over doctrinal understanding

The Problem: This violates our rational nature. As we learned in our discussion of the soul, reason is an essential attribute of human nature. Faith that contradicts or ignores reason becomes unstable, often degenerating into mere emotion or arbitrary opinion.

Protestant Variations

Protestant Christianity spans much of this spectrum:

• Reformed traditions often emphasize faith's priority while maintaining sophisticated theological reasoning
• Evangelical movements vary widely, from highly intellectual approaches to strongly experiential ones
• Liberal Protestantism sometimes tilts toward the rationalist extreme
• Fundamentalism sometimes approaches the fideist extreme

Each brings valuable insights while facing particular temptations toward one extreme or the other.

Eastern Orthodox: The Mystical Balance

Eastern Orthodox Christianity emphasizes the mysterious nature of divine truth while maintaining rigorous theological reasoning. For example:

• Both Orthodox and Catholics believe in the Eucharistic transformation (that bread and wine become Christ's Body and Blood)
• Catholics typically employ philosophical categories (like "transubstantiation") to explain how this occurs
• Orthodox traditions often prefer to maintain the mystery without philosophical explanation

This isn't anti-rational but rather emphasizes the limits of human concepts when approaching divine realities. Orthodox theology is highly sophisticated but tends toward apophatic (negative) approaches that emphasize what God is not rather than positive definitions.

The Catholic Integration

The Catholic Church explicitly teaches that faith and reason are not only compatible but mutually supportive. As Pope John Paul II wrote in Fides et Ratio: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth."

This means:

• Reason prepares for faith by demonstrating God's existence and our need for Him
• Faith illuminates reason by providing revealed truths that reason could never discover alone
• Reason serves faith by helping us understand revealed truth more deeply
• Faith protects reason from errors that pure philosophy might fall into

Western Catholicism tends to emphasize the rational explanation of faith through systematic theology and philosophy.

Eastern Catholicism (various Eastern Rite Churches in communion with Rome) maintains the Eastern emphasis on mystery while accepting the Western commitment to rational theology.

Both represent the same fundamental integration approached through different cultural and theological traditions.

Why Supernatural Religion Is "Better"

It's better to embrace supernatural religion not because natural religion is false, but because supernatural religion fulfills natural religion's deepest aspirations:

Completeness of Knowledge

Natural religion leaves us with tantalizing questions: What is God's personal name? Does He love us individually? How can we overcome moral failure? Supernatural religion provides answers that satisfy reason's deepest inquiries.

Power for Transformation

Natural religion shows us moral ideals but cannot give us strength to achieve them consistently. Supernatural religion offers sacramental grace—divine power that enables us to live according to revealed truth.

Personal Relationship

Natural religion establishes God as cosmic principle; supernatural religion reveals Him as loving Father who knows us intimately and desires eternal relationship with us.

Ultimate Hope

Natural religion suggests some form of afterlife based on moral desert; supernatural religion promises resurrection, forgiveness, and ultimate victory over evil and death.

The Integration in Practice

This integration affects how we approach life's biggest questions:

In suffering: Natural religion provides philosophical context for understanding evil; supernatural religion adds God's personal presence and promise of ultimate redemption.

In moral decision-making: Natural reason discerns general moral principles; revelation provides specific guidance and sacramental strength to follow them.

In worship: Natural religion supports reverent acknowledgment of God's greatness; supernatural religion enables intimate communion through prayer and sacrament.

In community: Natural religion suggests universal human dignity; supernatural religion reveals our calling as adopted children of God meant for eternal fellowship.

Our Supernatural Nature

Here's the deeper point: supernatural religion doesn't violate human nature—it fulfills our supernatural aspects. As rational beings made in God's image, we naturally aspire beyond what pure materialism can satisfy. Our souls are made for infinite truth, perfect goodness, and eternal love.

Natural religion satisfies some of these aspirations through philosophical discovery. But our rational souls are capable of receiving supernatural revelation and supernatural grace. To limit ourselves to natural religion alone would be like a person capable of friendship restricting themselves to mere acquaintanceship.

The Christian Synthesis

To be Christian means embracing supernatural religion that perfectly integrates faith and reason:

• We use reason to demonstrate faith's rational foundations
• We accept revelation that fulfills reason's deepest inquiries
• We employ philosophy to understand revealed truth more deeply
• We trust divine authority even when understanding remains partial
• We seek mystical union grounded in rational knowledge
• We live practical morality empowered by supernatural grace

This isn't compromise but synthesis—supernatural religion that honors our rational nature while elevating it through divine grace.

Conclusion: The Fullness of Truth

It is indeed "better to be super"—not because the supernatural contradicts the natural, but because it perfects it. Just as grace builds on nature without destroying it, supernatural religion builds on natural religion without contradicting it.

The Catholic vision presents Christianity not as a choice between faith or reason, but as the supernatural fulfillment of both. In Christ and His Church, we encounter not just philosophical truth about God, but God Himself personally revealing His love and offering us participation in His divine life.

This is why supernatural religion represents not the abandonment of human reason, but its ultimate fulfillment in the service of divine love.

In our next exploration, we'll examine how this supernatural revelation reaches us through specific historical channels: Scripture, Tradition, and the Church's teaching authority.