Miracles (20 page)
Authors: C. S. Lewis
CLIVE STAPLES LEWIS
(1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential Christian writer of his day. He was a Fellow and tutor in English literature at Oxford University until 1954 when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include
The Chronicles of Narnia, Out of the Silent Planet, The Four Loves, The Screwtape Letters
, and
Mere Christianity
. For more information about C. S. Lewis, visit www.cslewis.com.
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OOKS BY
C. S. L
EWIS
A Grief Observed
George MacDonald: An Anthology
Mere Christianity
Miracles
The Abolition of Man
The Great Divorce
The Problem of Pain
The Screwtape Letters
(with
“Screwtape Proposes a Toast”)
The Weight of Glory
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM
H
ARPERCOLLINS
The Chronicles of Narnia:
The Magician’s Nephew
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle
Cover design: The Designworksgroup, Jason Gabbert
Illustration: Antar Dayal
MIRACLES
:
A Preliminary Study
. Copyright © 1947 by C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1974 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Revised 1960, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-194976-0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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1
This definition is not that which would be given by many theologians. I am adopting it not because I think it an improvement upon theirs but precisely because, being crude and ‘popular’, it enables me most easily to treat those questions which ‘the common reader’ probably has in mind when he takes up a book on Miracles.
1
See Appendix A.
1
If any region of reality is in fact chancy or lawless then it is a region which, so far from admitting Miracle with special ease, renders the word ‘Miracle’ meaningless throughout that region.
1
Senex mente confusus
Cassian quoted in Gibbon, cap. xlvii.
2
Athanasian Creed.
3
St Chrysostom
De Incomprehensibili
quoted in Otto,
Idea of the Holy
, Appendix 1.
4
Athanasius De Incarnatione viii.
5
John 1:1.
6
Colossians 1:17.
7
Colossians 1 ε’ ν αυ’τφ ε’χτισθη. John 1:4.
8
Ephesians 1:10.
9
Jeremiah 23:24.
10
Ezekiel 1:26.
11
Deuteronomy 4:15.
12
Genesis 1:1.
1
Hence, if a Minister of Education professes to value religion and at the same time takes steps to suppress Christianity, it does not necessarily follow that he is a hypocrite or even (in the ordinary this-wordly sense of the word) a fool. He may sincerely desire more ‘religion’ and rightly see that the suppression of Christianity is a necessary preliminary to his design.
2
A Descriptive Catalogue
. Number IV.
1
Science and the Modern World
, Chapter II.
1
Essays
, I, xii, Apology for Raimond de Sebonde.
2
I owe this point to Canon Adam Fox.
1
A consideration of the Old Testament miracles is beyond the scope of this book and would require many kinds of knowledge which I do not possess. My present view—which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction—would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God’s becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in
mythical
form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history (as Euhemerus thought) nor diabolical illusion (as some of the Fathers thought) nor priestly lying (as the philosophers of the Enlightenment thought) but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology—the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truths, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical. Whether we can ever say with certainty where, in this process of crystallisation, any particular Old Testament story fails, is another matter. I take it that the Memoirs of David’s court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end. It should be noted that on this view (
a
) Just as God, in becoming Man, is ‘emptied’ of His glory, so the truth, when it comes down from the ‘heaven’ of myth to the ‘earth’ of history, undergoes a certain humiliation. Hence the New Testament is, and ought to be, more prosaic, in some ways less
splendid
, than the Old; just as the Old Testament is and ought to be less rich in many kinds of imaginative beauty than the Pagan mythologies. (
b
) Just as God is none the less God by being Man, so the Myth remains Myth even when it becomes Fact. The story of Christ demands from us, and repays, not only a religious and historical but also an imaginative response. It is directed to the child, the poet, and the savage in us as well as to the conscience and to the intellect. One of its functions is to break down dividing walls.
2
Matthew 17:20, 21:21, Mark 11:23, Luke 10:19, John 14:12, 1 Corinthians 3:22, 2 Timothy 2:12.
3
Philippians 3:21, 1 John 3:1, 2.
4
Cf. Matthew 23:9.
1
i.e. the Body with its five senses.
1
Because the ‘spirit’ in this sense is identical with the New Man (the Christ formed in each perfected Christian) some Latin theologians call it simply our
Novitas
i.e. our ‘newness’.
1
Admittedly all I have done is to turn the tables by making human volitions the constant and physical destiny the variable. This is as false as the opposite view; the point is that it is no falser. A subtler image of creation and freedom (or rather, creation of the free and the unfree in a single timeless act) would be the
almost
simultaneous mutual adaptation in the movement of two expert dancing partners.