7.04.2010

Miracles (C.S. Lewis)


I like the way C. S. Lewis thinks. I respect his reasoning. I admire his intelligence. I applaud his efforts at explaining the logic of the existence of miracles. I love several of his other books. I love the concept of miracles as they relate to the Christian faith, and have always found the specific miracles mentioned within the Bible most interesting. But this book, Miracles, as a whole really just stinks. I spent most of the first 142 pages of this book drowning in the confusing philosophy of naturalism, supernaturalism, pantheism, probability, propriety, something Lewis called red herrings, and something else he called horrid red things. It was miserable, to tell the truth. My curiosity and hope for some small morsel of comprehension was all that propelled me, and my efforts were indeed rewarded. There were a few such morsels which I am thankful for helping me think more deeply and carefully about the character of our God and what He has done for us. 
pg. 117 “He is the opaque center of all existences, the thing that simply and entirely is the fountain of facthood.”
The best chapter, by far, is 14, in which Lewis describes the miracle of the incarnation of Jesus in the flesh. This chapter makes the whole book worth reading. 
pg. 147-148  “...God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still...to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He created. But He goes down to come up and pull the whole ruined world up with Him.” Now THAT is good stuff. I have never heard the coming of Christ put so eloquently and poetic. It makes me want to see a painting created to depict such thought. 
There are some fairly interesting thoughts about death, some about which I continue to consider. 
pg. 166- “[Death] is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.”
A thought about the comparison of miracles with fairy tales:
pg. 174-175 - “The fitness of the Christian miracles, and their differences from these mythological miracles, lies in the fact that they show invasion by a Power which is not alien. They are what might be expected to happen when she invaded not simply by a god, but by the God of Nature: by a Power which is outside her jurisdiction not as a foreigner but as a sovereign. They proclaim that He who has come is not merely a king, but the king, her King and ours. It is this which...puts Christian miracles in a different class from most other miracles.” 
Miracles has really done nothing to either deepen or alter my pre-existing sense of or belief in the occurrence of supernatural or miraculous events. I do reserve, however, that this book is likely just well above my realm of understanding and will probably be greater enjoyed by those who are much smarter and philosophical than myself. 


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