The Grand Miracle

Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee. JEREMIAH 32:17

In 1947 Lewis published Miracles, the most philosophical of his popular books. It addressed a question that many modern people consider settled: can a reasonable person believe in miracles at all? Lewis argued that the answer depends on what one believes about the nature of reality, and that the case against miracles rests on a philosophy that cannot survive examination.

Two pictures of the world

Lewis began by distinguishing two views of reality. The first, which he called naturalism, holds that nature is all there is — a vast, self-contained system of causes and effects, with nothing outside it. If naturalism is true, miracles are impossible, because there is nothing outside nature to interfere with it. The second view, which he called supernaturalism, holds that nature is not the whole of reality; that there is a God who made it and who stands outside it. If supernaturalism is true, miracles are at least possible.

The question, then, is which picture is true. And here Lewis made the argument for which the book is chiefly remembered.

The argument from reason

If naturalism is true, Lewis argued, then every thought we think is simply the product of physical causes — chemical events in the brain, themselves caused by earlier events, going back to the beginning of the universe. Our thoughts are not caused by the truth of what we think, but by blind processes that have nothing to do with truth. But if that is so, we have no reason to trust our thoughts — including the thought that naturalism is true. Naturalism, in other words, undermines the very reasoning by which anyone might come to believe it. It saws off the branch on which it sits.

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. PSALM 14:1

Lewis concluded that human reason, if it is to be trusted at all, must have its source in something beyond nature — in a rational Mind. Our capacity to know truth is itself evidence that we are not merely products of nature, but creatures made in the image of a reasoning God.

A debate and a revision

This argument led to one of the most famous episodes in Lewis’s career. In February 1948, at the Socratic Club in Oxford, the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, herself a devout Christian, presented a paper criticising the argument as Lewis had stated it. She argued that he had confused different senses of words such as cause and reason. Accounts of the evening differ about how badly Lewis felt he had fared, but he took the criticism seriously, and when Miracles was reissued in 1960 he rewrote the chapter to meet it. That is worth remembering. Lewis did not treat his arguments as infallible, and he was willing to revise them when a fair critic showed him a weakness. Philosophers still debate the argument in its revised form, and many think it has real force.

What a miracle is

Lewis also addressed the common objection that miracles break the laws of nature. He argued that this misunderstands what laws of nature are. The laws describe what happens when nothing outside nature intervenes. They do not forbid intervention; they simply say what will happen once it has occurred. If you place a stone on a table, the laws of physics will tell you that it stays there; if someone picks it up, the laws do not complain. In the same way, a miracle does not break the laws of nature. God introduces a new event into the system, and the laws at once take it up and carry on from there. Once the new event has occurred, nature receives it and carries on with it in her ordinary way.

And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down. JOHN 6:11

He also responded to the objection, associated with the philosopher David Hume, that no amount of testimony could ever make a miracle credible, because the uniform experience of humanity is against it. Lewis pointed out that we only know the experience against miracles is uniform if we already know that all reports of miracles are false — which is precisely the question at issue.

The Grand Miracle

The heart of the book is not the philosophy but the Incarnation. Lewis called it the Grand Miracle, the central event of which all other miracles are either preparations or consequences. In the Incarnation, God the Son came down into His own creation, took on human nature, went down even into death, and rose again, bringing human nature up with Him. Lewis saw this pattern of descent and return everywhere: in the seed that falls into the ground and dies and then springs up; in the rhythm of night and day; in the stories of the dying god. All of these, he suggested, are echoes of the great movement by which God stooped down to raise us up.

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. JOHN 12:24

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. PHILIPPIANS 2:6–7

The miracles of Christ, Lewis argued, are not random displays of power. They are of a piece with creation, not at odds with it. Augustine had made the point long before him: the Lord who turned water into wine at Cana is the same Lord whose ordinary gifts fill the vineyards every year. And the resurrection, Lewis believed, is the first sign of a new creation, the beginning of the remaking of nature itself.

Weighing it

Miracles is a demanding book, and not every reader will follow every step of its argument. But its central claims — that naturalism cannot account for reason, that miracles are possible if God exists, and that the Incarnation is the key to the whole Christian story — are sound, and they have helped many thinking people.

If there is a caution, it is that arguments of this kind can establish only that miracles are possible. Whether any particular miracle actually happened is a question of evidence, and for the Christian the decisive evidence is the testimony of the apostles to the risen Christ. Lewis knew this and pointed to it; a reader should go on from his book to the testimony itself.

And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once. 1 CORINTHIANS 15:5–6

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Have you been influenced by the assumption that miracles cannot happen? Where did that assumption come from?

2. Thank God that your ability to reason and to know truth is itself a gift from Him.

3. Read the account of a miracle in the Gospels, and consider what it shows about the God who made nature.

4. Meditate on Philippians 2:5–11. Trace the pattern of Christ’s coming down and being lifted up.

5. Read 1 Corinthians 15 and give thanks for the evidence of the resurrection.

A PRAYER

Almighty God, You made the heavens and the earth, and there is nothing too hard for You.

Thank You for the gift of reason, and for making me able to know Your truth.

Thank You above all for the Grand Miracle: that Your Son came down to us, took our nature, died our death, and rose again to bring us up with Him.

Let me live today in the power of His resurrection, and look for the day when all creation will be made new. Amen.