Can there be Supernaturalism without Theism? Contra Tooley’s thesis

In a recent debate with Alvin Plantinga, Michael Tooley argued that supernaturalism does not imply theism. He suggested that supernaturalism could be true, and still there could be no God, since there might be a supernatural entity which is not personal, or good, or omniscient, or whatever else we take to be necessary attributes of God. In this paper I challenge this view. I try to define supernaturalism, and I suggest that a particular denial of naturalism calls for supernatural explanation. Subsequently, I define theism, and I contend that any supernatural explanation of certain features of the natural world must have some traits which are sufficient to make it a form of theism. My conclusion defends Plantiga’s argument for theism against Tooley’s objection, but requires at the same time some crucial qualifications about the notion of transcendence, and about our capacity to think of a transcendent reality.