Things and power

In this premodern, enchanted universe, it was also assumed that power resided in things, which is precisely why things like relics or the Host could be invested with spiritual power. As a result, “in the enchanted world, the line between personal agency and impersonal force was not at all clearly drawn” (p. 32). There is a kind of blurring of boundaries so that it is not only personal agents that have causal power (p. 35). Things can do stuff.—James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 29 (emphasis original)

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And what makes you think that they don't? It's a widespread belief, rearing its head in the Bible and throughout the ancient world. There's a marvelous book on it, sadly now out of print, that I've excerpted from in the past: Barbara Nevling Porter, ed., What Is a God?

The world is an enchanted place, if only we would take off our materialistic glasses (I mean philosophically materialistic—that the physically visible world is all there is). The mystics know that, and the two-thirds world knows it. But we've lost touch with it. And that's what this book is all about…

Just an
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