More in Heaven and Earth Than Is Dreamt of...

I am a religious man and a reasonable man.  For some, this a problematic statement.  They would insist there is no such animal, that it is a non-sequitur to say someone is both reasonable and religious.

Admittedly, many of the people who assert such things have a child's notion of religion.  I am reminded of a story told me by an older priest, who many years ago attended a debate at Union Theological Seminary in New York between the German theologian Paul Tillich and a logical positivist philosopher from Columbia University. The debate centered on the reasonableness of religion.  The philosopher had the first crack and immediately launched into a dismissive swipe at the biblical account of creation, stating it was patently absurd to think, in this age of science, that God created the world in seven days or that the first woman was shaped from a rib of the first man.  When it came time for Tillich's rebuttal, he stood up and said, "You'll get no argument from me.  I thought this was going to be a debate."  He then proceeded to describe the symbolic semiotics of religion, leaving the philosopher so flummoxed and embarrassed, he could not continue.  The smug sense of superiority, coupled with an oddly literalistic and ignorant misunderstanding of religion, that characterized the positivist philosopher's attitude is reproduced again and again in the many atheists who imagine themselves to be enlightened, but who show a startling lack of knowledge or curiosity about theology, biblical scholarship, the relationship between psychology and religions, or the philosophy of religion.

At the same time, many secular skeptics have a difficult time dealing with phenomena that do not seem to be explicable in scientific terms: miraculous healings, the appearance of angels, demonic possession, etc.  The typical response is, "Well, there has to be a natural explanation.  Either this is a fraud or we simply don't understand the science well enough at this point."  The notion that there could be a supernatural explanation is dismissed out of hand.  In the grip of a naive realism, they refuse to consider the possibility of a transcendent reality existing outside the box of nature, i.e., that which is governed by physical laws.  That said, I must confess that many religious persons are also reluctant to embrace supernaturalism.  This is particularly true of people who subscribe to more liberal forms of religion.  As a graduate of both Harvard and Union Theological Seminary of New York, stalwart bastions of liberal religion, I once counted myself among them... but not any more.

I first gained an inkling that there might be some invisible realm of reality that every once in a great while crashes into our own when I read a reprint of an article written by a professor of religion at Smith College back in 1963.  The professor, Ralph Harlow, was a product of the same modernist, "enlightened" form of religion that had shaped my early understanding.  Prior to a walk in a park he took with his wife, he would have explained angels as symbolic conveyors of God's word in Scripture: in essence, a literary device.  On that day in 1963, he and his wife both heard voices behind them on the park pathway and kept looking back to see if someone was following behind, but could see no one.  The voices grew louder and stranger, so that Harlow became convinced that a large gaggle of foreign students must have entered the park, but still they could see no one behind them.  Then, suddenly, the voices were above their heads.  They looked up and, to their astonishment, saw a flight of winged creatures in colorful, flowing robes, chattering with one another in an unintelligible tongue.  Stunned, unable to take in what he had just seen, Harlow reached for a park bench and abruptly sat down.  His wife slowly settled down next to him.  He looked at her and before the words, "Did you see what I see?" were out of his mouth, he knew the answer.  It was in her eyes.  All she had to do was nod.  Harlow's account of his experience in Guideposts magazine was the first plausible telling of an encounter with angels I had ever read, but it was not to be the last.  I have since become convinced: angels are real.  Some of the current crop of public atheists have expressed dismay that despite our ever-accelerating advances in science, so many, even among the well educated, still cling to such "superstitions."  Perhaps it is because enough people have had inexplicable encounters like that of Prof. Harlow and his wife to render the secular skeptic's version of reality too limiting to fit "the data."

The second impetus to reconsider my perspective was my encounter with the work of Dr. Larry Dossey, a physician who has spent much of his career examining the relationship between healing and prayer.  Dossey, when he was a resident at a large Dallas hospital back in the 1980s, had been dismissive of prayer as anything more than a source of emotional comfort.  A scientific rationalist, he considered as ludicrous the idea that prayer could heal, or that God would heal through prayer... until, that is, he witnessed it firsthand.  A patient of his who had "terminal" cancer in both lungs was completely, inexplicably healed, after his friends and fellow believers had prayed for him.  There had been no therapy, no radiation or chemo.  The physicians had told the man to make his final arrangements.  There was no explanation for it that made sense within the bounds of science.  Dossey began to wonder about the relationship between prayer and healing and the more he studied, the more evident it became to him that the two were profoundly and often dramatically linked.  Dossey's testimony was later reinforced for me through the work of another skeptic who witnessed the healing power of prayer, the Pittsburgh journalist Emily Gardiner Neal.  Their work had a profound effect on my own tepid view of prayer, which I saw largely as a way of remaining present to God and one another, but in no sense a pathway to physical healing.  I have since become convicted of its power, but did not witness it personally until 2007.  A lay woman in our church, a very active and influential member, had battled throat cancer in the early 90s and had been healed through the usual methods, but the cancer had suddenly come roaring back and her doctors were not optimistic about her future.  When a prayer team from Faith Alive, a renewal ministry in the Episcopal Church, arrived at our church, she asked them to pray over her in the hope of healing.  I joined in that prayer, but tempered my expectations because I had known many who had prayed and not received the physical healing they had pleaded for.  But two weeks later, my parishioner burst into my office, so excited she could hardly contain herself.  The cancer had vanished and her physicians were completely baffled.

I am admittedly astonished at the capacity of human intelligence to understand the physical realities of God's universe.  It staggers the mind to think we can see to very edge of the universe and calculate the very moment when it all began.  Science is undeniably powerful, revealing wonders our devout ancestors never dreamed of.   But it no longer surprises me to think that there may be limits to what science can reveal, that there are phenomena that transcend the cosmic reality of matter and energy, that spirit may be more than thought, more than consciousness.  Ironically, paradoxically, it is the very immensity of the universe science has revealed that confirms it for me.  If God is capable of creating a cosmos of this magnitude, surely he has infused it with wonders that are beyond human ken.  Angels and miracles?  Why not?  To my rationalist friends, I would quote Hamlet to his skeptical friend: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."