Editing Preternatural (section)

==Theology==
Medieval theologians made a clear distinction between the natural, the preternatural and the [[supernatural]]. [[Thomas Aquinas]] argued that the supernatural consists in "God’s unmediated actions"; the natural is "what happens always or most of the time"; and the preternatural is "what happens rarely, but nonetheless by the agency of created beings...Marvels belong, properly speaking, to the realm of the preternatural."<ref>Israel Burshatin, "Elena Alias Elewno: Genders, sexualities, and 'race' in the mirror of natural history in sixteenth-century Spain" in Sabrina Petra Ramet, ''Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives'', Routledge, New York, 1996, p.114.</ref> Theologians, following Aquinas, argued that only God had the power to disregard the laws of nature that He has created, but that demons could manipulate the laws of nature by a form of trickery, to deceive the unwary into believing they had experienced real miracles. According to historian [[Lorraine Daston]],

{{Blockquote | style=font-size: 100%; | Although demons, astral intelligences, and other spirits might manipulate natural causes with superhuman dexterity and thereby work marvels, as mere creatures they could never transcend from the preternatural to the supernatural and work genuine miracles.<ref name = "Lor">Lorraine Daston, "Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe", Peter G. Platt, ''Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture'', University of Delaware Press, Newark, 1999, pp.&nbsp;76–105.</ref>}}

By the 16th century, the term "preternatural" was increasingly used to refer to demonic activity comparable to the use of magic by human adepts: The [[Devil]], "being a natural Magician&nbsp;... may perform many acts in ways above our knowledge, though not transcending our natural power."<ref name = "Lor"/> According to the philosophy of the time, preternatural phenomena were not contrary to divine law, but used hidden, or [[occult]] powers that violated the ''normal'' pattern of natural phenomena.<ref name = "Lor"/>

[[Orestes Brownson]], in his nineteenth-century autobiographical novel ''The Spirit-Rapper'', has the Christian apologist Mr. Merton say "Man has a double nature, is composed of body and soul ... A supernatural power assists him to rise; a preternatural power assists him, so to speak, to descend".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brownson |first=Orestes |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y-kRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA304 |title=The Spirit-Rapper |publisher=Little, Brown, and Company |year=1854 |isbn=9781404721098 |location=Boston |pages=304 |archive-url=https://archive.org/details/spiritrapperauto00brow/page/304/mode/1up |archive-date=27 February 2012 |url-status=live}}</ref>