A Biblical View of the Paranormal and Supernatural
Twenty-first-century Christians tend to drift toward two extremes when confronted with the paranormal. Some seem embarrassed by the biblical supernatural and go to great lengths to provide naturalistic explanations. Others are lured by tabloid paranormal claims, far-removed from reality.
In the book of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul describes the true nature of reality. His propositions lay out the basis for interactions between both a natural and supernatural realm. These form a useful hypothesis for examining phenomena that may be connected to paranormal or supernatural phenomena. Assuming Paul’s propositions are true, we would expect this Ephesians Hypothesis to be testable in our physical world.
In other words, we should be able to make predictions about how the unseen interacts with the seen—how the supernatural interacts with the natural. And, if the Ephesians Hypothesis is correct, we would expect it to have explanatory power with some phenomena, especially those that appear to have causes beyond the physical universe.
This certainly isn’t to imply that every unusual or hard-to-explain phenomenon is supernatural. However, there is only one supernatural reality as described in Scripture. Therefore, if a supernatural cause is indicated, it will necessarily be of the type described in Ephesians 6—not some contrived reality, made to fit a particular phenomenon. The purpose of this book is to examine some contemporary paranormal claims in light of the Ephesians Hypothesis.
