Miracles

by C.S. Lewis

Miracle to mean an interference with Nature by supernatural power.

C.S. Lewis definition of a miracle

The Super-naturalist, on the other hand, believes that the one original or self-existent thing is on a different level from, and more important than, all other things.

Super- naturalist view

The Supernaturalist believes that one Thing exists on its own and has produced the framework of space and time and the procession of systematically connected events which fill them.

Super- naturalist view

Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually exclusive.

Caused as a definition is different

But this, as it seems to me, is what Naturalism is bound to do. It offers what professes to be a full account of our mental behaviour; but this account, on inspection, leaves no room for the acts of knowing or insight on which the whole value of our thinking, as a means to truth, depends.

C.S. Lewis thoughts of naturalism

In other words the relation between Reason and Nature is what some people call an Unsymmetrical Relation.

Unsymmetrical Relation

There is, then, a God who is not a part of Nature. But nothing has yet been said to show that He must have created her. Might God and Nature be both self-existent and totally independent of each other? If you thought they were you would be a Dualist and would hold a view which I consider manlier and more reasonable than any form of Naturalism.

Dualist position

It is certainly easier than the idea of God and Nature as wholly unrelated entities, and far easier than the idea of Nature producing valid thought.

God and nature as two separate entities

But logical thinking—Reasoning—had to be the pivot of the argument because, of all the claims which the human mind puts forward, the claim of Reasoning to be valid is the only one which the Naturalist cannot deny without (philosophically speaking) cutting his own throat.

Case for logical thinking

Besides reasoning about matters of fact, men also make moral judgements—‘I ought to do this’—‘I ought not to do that’—‘This is good’—‘That is evil.

Reasoning Capacity

morality is based on such self-evident principles that we say to a man, when we would recall him to right conduct, ‘Be reasonable.

Reasonable self evident truths that hold intrinsic proofs from with the practice

All these instances show that the fact which is in one respect the most obvious and primary fact, and through which alone you have access to all the other facts, may be precisely the one that is most easily forgotten—forgotten not because it is so remote or abstruse but because it is so near and so obvious.

The primary is most often forgotten

St Joseph finally accepted the view that his fiancée’s pregnancy was due not to unchastity but to a miracle, he accepted the miracle as something contrary to the known order of nature.

Miracle

can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. Belief in miracles,

C.S. Lewis on miracles standard. The standard of a miracle.