What is the supernatural?
You might answer that what makes something supernatural is that it’s immaterial, or not confined to space and time, or beyond the domain of physics. Yet the laws of logic aren’t material, confined to space and time, or within the domain of physics, since the laws of logic would hold even if no material things, space, time, or physics existed. But neither are the laws of logic supernatural. You don’t believe in the supernatural simply because you accept the law of noncontradiction.
In his article “The Concept of the Supernatural,” philosopher Gilbert Fulmer argues that what makes something supernatural is that an agent brings it about simply by willing it. The ritual of exorcism illustrates the point. An exorcist isn’t the Orkin man: he doesn’t use some mechanism to get rid of unwanted visitors. Instead, he uses magic, and the magic succeeds if, and only if, God wills it to succeed in the particular case at hand.
On that basis, Fulmer argues that nothing supernatural could be fundamental: “If [an agent’s] will is always or sometimes effective, that regularity is an impersonal fact about the universe which cannot be the result of his will.” As a matter of logic, no agent, not even God, can will into existence the efficacy of its own will: no agent can, simply by willing, make it true that its will is effective. If the agent’s will is ever effective, then that fact is a natural fact because it doesn’t ultimately depend on anyone’s will.
If you say that God’s being omnipotent explains why God’s will suffices to bring things about, you’re citing a fact that can’t be a product of God’s will (and if not a product of God’s will, then not a product of anyone’s will). You’re citing a natural fact, not a supernatural one.
