Here are some notes on a fascinating book our resident historian, Dr. Vito C. Caiati, recommended to me: Carlos Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible (Yale UP, 2023, xviii + 492 pp. ). The book is about such phenomena as levitation and bilocation. It is meticulous, well-written, and utterly fascinating.
1) Eire tells us that a fundamental difference between Roman Catholics and Protestants is that, while both accept the distinction between the natural and the supernatural, and the reality of both realms, Protestants reject the “intermingling” of the two. (p. 17) The natural world is the material or physical world. It is the realm of space-time-matter. The supernatural realm is that of spirit. Both Catholics and Protestants accept the reality of both realms or orders, and the subordinate status of the natural order. Both also accept that the supernatural realm is God’s alone. This by way of contrast to the predominant view of modernity which we can call metaphysical naturalism. This is the view that reality is exhausted by space-time-matter. If that is the case, then of course there is no God, and the supernatural category is empty.
To put it in my own way, there is a major and a minor opposition. The major opposition is that between supernaturalism and naturalism. The minor opposition is one within supernaturalism between a view that allows the irruption of the supernatural into the natural, and one that does not. So I will say, glossing Eire, that Catholics are ‘irruptionists’ and Protestants ‘non-irruptionists.’ But this simple schematization needs qualification which I will provide in sections (3) and (4) below. But first:
2) An example of what I am calling the irruption of the supernatural into the natural, and what Eire calls the “intermingling” of the supernatural and the natural, is what is supposed to occur in the traditional Catholic mass, namely, the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The technical theological term for this is ‘transubstantiation.’ The idea is that in the mass at the moment of consecration, Christ himself becomes really present, literally not figuratively present, in the consecrated elements, bread and wine. This is an irruption that no Protestant countenances.
3) But if there had never been any irruptions of the supernatural into the natural, would any religions ever have arisen? Presumably not, as Eire suggests: “. . .all encounters with a supernatural reality are the bedrock upon which religions have been built.” (xiv) He goes on to refer to these encounters as “theophanies,” “hierophanies,” and “irruptions of the sacred.” Given that an irruption of the supernatural is a miracle (miraculum, prodigium) as Eire points out (p. 15), and given that Protestantism is a religion or a family of religions, it follows that there had to have been some miracles that Protestants countenance. Which?
4) Protestants countenance only those that occurred before the first century anno domini. This is the doctrine of the “cessation of mysteries” or the “cessation of charismata.” Eire tells us that this doctrine was accepted by Protestants of all stripes. (p. 17) The miracles related in the Bible really occurred but “became unnecessary after the birth of the early church and would never, ever happen again.” (ibid.)
5) It follows from (4) that levitations, bilocations, stigmata, supernatural hyperosmia (a heightened sense of smell that allows the mystic to detect the sins of others), and many other bizarre phenomena, including supernatural insomnia, the power to get by with little or no sleep [Trump?] — all of them listed by Eire on p. 13 — could not be the work of God. Curiously, however, their occurrence is not deemed impossible by Protestants, but held actually to have occurred.
6) It follows from (4) & (5) that all of the above miraculous occurrences that occurred after the first century A. D. are diabolical in origin! Now whether this is really the Protestant line, one that Protestants of every stripe adhere to, is not for me to say, given my limited familiarity with Protestantism. I am simply reporting what Eire says. But it sounds right.
7) If Eire is right, then “miracles became a marker of difference between Catholics and Protestants . . . .” (p. 18) For the Protestants, all supposed miracles after the first century were either fraudulent or diabolical in origin. Not so for Catholics, who, while not denying that many supposed miracles are either fraudulent or diabolical in origin, held also that there are genuine miracles whose origin is divine. Enter the need for what is called “discernment” as between diabolical and divine etiology of presumptive miracles. As I read Eire, he is telling us that for Protestants, there are exactly two disjoint classes of presumptive miracles after the first century A. D., the fraudulent ones and the diabolical ones. For the ‘Romanists’ as Protestants sometimes call them, there are exactly three disjoint classes of presumptive miracles: the fraudulent, the diabolical, and the divine.
Perhaps we can say (and this is my formulation): for the traditional Catholic, miracles are presumed either fraudulent or diabolical unless proven divine. Now in the Anglo-American system of positive law, if a person is presumed innocent it does not follow that he is innocent, nor does it follow that he is not. Similarly with respect to miracles: the presumption of fraud or deviltry does not entail either, not does it not entail either. Hence the need for inquiry, trial, inquisition, The Inquisition. Either defeat the presumption or uphold it.
It just now occurs to me that in Protestantism there is no need for such an institution as the Inquisition because there is no need to discern between diabolical and divine causation of miracles. Why not? Because for the Protestants, no presumptive miracles are of divine origin. Protestants burned plenty of witches, but not after an inquiry into whether a given witch was a good witch or a bad witch: which type of witch is this witch is a question not posed. All were presumed bad, and the presumption was non-defeasible. Correct me if I am wrong about this.
8) Now we are getting in deep, where an historian of ideas such as Carlos Eire will not go. His history of the impossible is a history of the presumptively impossible, not the impossible an sich. He is clear about this, even though he doesn’t put it in quite the way I am putting it. Obviously, there cannot be a history of the impossible sensu stricto. For the impossible is that which cannot occur in any sense of ‘cannot’ whether logical, metaphysical, nomologically . . . . What cannot occur never occurred, whence it follows that there cannot be any history of it. So Eire is using ‘impossible’ sensu lato, to refer to ideas and views about occurrences such as levitations and bilocations according to which these putative occurences are regarded as impossible in the strict sense. That is his factual basis: views and opinions as attested by testimonies and documents in archives. Eire could rightly claim the title Archivarius Maximus given the load of lore he has laid before us in his 500 page tome.
9) The philosopher of religion wants to know, not just what various people at various times have opined about, say, the difference between religion and magic, or the difference between religion and superstition, but what these differences are, and whether they really obtain. If he is a Christian, he wants to know whether characteristic Christian doctrines such as Trinity and Incarnation are or are not superstitious nonsense. If he is a traditional Roman Catholic Christian, he wants to know whether or not the words of consecration in the mass Hoc est enim corpus meum are hocus pocus.