45 pages • 1-hour read
Miracles: A Preliminary Study
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Key Figures
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a prolific author and a professor of literature at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the mid-20th century. Lewis is known today mostly for his books, which include both fiction (such as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, and the Space Trilogy) and nonfiction, especially works of Christian theology and apologetics. Miracles falls in the latter category, alongside other famous Lewis works like Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain.
Lewis was born into a nominally Christian household in Belfast, Northern Ireland just before the turn of the 20th century, and was baptized into the Anglican Church of Ireland. As a teenager, however, he embraced skepticism and began considering himself an atheist. His early life revolved around reading and education, eventually leading him to enroll at University College in Oxford. His studies were interrupted by the First World War, in which Lewis served on the front lines, suffered injury, and lost his friend and roommate to a battlefield death. Back home in England, Lewis continued his studies and eventually became a tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he would spend the majority of his academic career. During his years at Oxford, he gradually came to reassess his commitment to atheism, slowly becoming convinced of the existence of God and then (a few years later) of the truth of Christianity. Several of his friends and fellow professors, including J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, were instrumental in leading him to faith.
Lewis came to the broader public’s attention through a series of radio addresses delivered across Britain during World War II. Those addresses later became the material which would be published as Mere Christianity, an explanation and defense of the Christian religion in relatively accessible terms. In 1954 he accepted a position to chair the department of medieval and renaissance literature at Cambridge University, though he also kept residence at his home in Oxford until the end of his life, in 1963. His influence continues in the 21st century, largely through his written works. He is most widely known as an author of children’s fantasy novels, thanks to the success of his Chronicles of Narnia (which span seven books, from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to The Last Battle). In Christian circles, he remains one of the most often-quoted theologians, and many of his works are considered modern classics. In 2013, Westminster Abbey honored Lewis with a memorial in its famous Poets’ Corner.
The Naturalist and the Supernaturalist
In the early chapters of Miracles, Lewis deals with these two opposing character-types, one of whom assumes that miracles cannot happen (the naturalist), and one of whom assumes they can. Though they might not know the term or apply it to themselves, all human beings fall in either one camp or the other. Naturalists base their worldview on the sense that nature is “all there is.” There is the possibility of some confusion on this point, because one might assume on the basis of this definition that if God exists, then God too would be part of nature, since nature includes all that exists. But this is a misunderstanding of the position; the naturalist believes that the scientifically observable cosmos (whether a universe, a multiverse, or something else) is all that exists, and that nothing can possibly exist beyond it. To the naturalist, there are no questions that cannot potentially be answered by gaining more knowledge about the natural systems around us. Nature operates by laws which can be discovered and understood, and any apparent “miracles” are merely temporary gaps in our knowledge of how the universe works. Nature is a closed system which requires no other explanation for its existence beyond itself, and nothing exists beyond it which could exert any influence upon it.
The supernaturalist, by contrast, assumes that nature—the scientifically observable cosmos, which functions according to fixed laws and patterns—is not all that exists. The supernaturalist believes that nature is not a sufficient explanation for its own existence, and that nature itself must be the product, effect, or creation of some other cause which lies beyond itself. Most supernaturalists believe that this external cause is God (or a broader pantheon of divine figures or forces), who, as the one who caused nature’s existence, is not bound within its system. Thus this external cause can exert influence on the system of nature, much as an author can modify the plot of their novel at will, or as a computer programmer could introduce new code into the already-running system of a program. Such interventions, coming from beyond the normal course of natural events, would look like miracles to those within the system. In arguing that the modern skepticism against miracles is based partly in cultural bias, Lewis takes pain to note that while naturalists now feel their philosophy to be the obvious position of common sense, the overwhelming majority of humans throughout history have thought the same of the supernaturalist position, and not simply due to a dearth of scientific knowledge.
Jesus Christ
Of the few historical persons Lewis mentions in Miracles, none looms larger than Jesus Christ. Jesus was born in ancient Judea some two millennia ago and grew up in the town of Nazareth, in Galilee (the northern portion of modern Israel/Palestine). The primary sources for his life are the four gospels in the Bible’s New Testament, written by Jesus’s circle of followers in the decades following his ministry. Those gospels tell the story of Jesus’s work of teaching and healing, his death by execution on a Roman cross, and his resurrection from the dead. Because of his followers’ convictions regarding his identity, he began to be called by the honorific title “Christ” (the Greek version of the Hebrew title “Messiah”). The early Christians believed Jesus to be the Son of God—a conviction based both on his own recorded teachings, on his apparent supernatural power, and on his resurrection—and they regarded his sacrificial death on the cross as the climactic event in the grand narrative of God’s plan to save humanity.
As a committed Christian, Lewis adheres to the traditional conception of Jesus in its entirety. For Lewis, the incarnation—the event by which the eternal Son of God entered our history by becoming human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth—was the turning-point of the whole cosmic story of our universe. The miracle of God becoming a man—and the many miracles Jesus did during his incarnation, including the resurrection—form the apex of the story of God’s supernatural incursions into human history. Every miracle which God causes to happen, then, is ordered toward what Lewis calls the “grand miracle” of the incarnation of Christ, either foreshadowing it, bearing witness to it, or resulting from it.
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish skeptical philosopher during the Enlightenment of the 18th century. An empiricist who followed and expanded upon the ideas of John Locke, Hume became one of the most influential philosophers in the early modern period, with the impact of his ideas stretching not only into philosophy but also into science, history, psychology, politics, economics, and religion. In a European context that was still outwardly linked to Christianity at almost every level of society, Hume stood out for his willingness to question long-held dogmas. He suggested a naturalistic interpretation for the operations of nature, including even the inner workings of the human mind. In his piece “Of Miracles,” part of his larger treatise Enquiry Concerning Human Nature, Hume developed a probabilistic argument that cast the veracity of miracle accounts (including those in the Christian gospels) into serious doubt for many readers.
Lewis interacts directly with Hume’s ideas in Chapter 13 of Miracles, but much of the foregoing material which Lewis attributes to naturalists had its origin in Hume’s system of thought. In most instances of his treatment of Hume-inspired naturalism, Lewis accuses it of begging the question, founding an argument on unproven premises that lead to a foregone conclusion. He also specifically critiques Hume’s method of assuming probabilities with regard to miracles, regarding it as an unpersuasive argument since it applies only to the that which occurs within the “frame” of nature, whereas Lewis argues that miracles originate outside this frame.
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