C. S. Lewis and the Philosophy of Miracles

Miracles is probably my favorite non-fiction book by C. S. Lewis. It is his most philosophical work, and one in which he builds a logical argument one step at a time throughout the entire book. I still remember the feeling after my first reading: a feeling of just having gone through an incredible and wonderfully articulate thinking process. 

What seems to have led Lewis to writing the book is the question, “How reliable are the Gospels and the other New Testament writings that tell us about the life of Jesus?” It is a question that has been hotly debated in the last few hundred years, especially among German theologians of the 19th and early 20th century. 

What C. S. Lewis criticized about this debate is that since the supernatural is essential in the Gospels, the discussion has often centered around philosophical presuppositions rather than historical evidence. Theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann, Lewis maintained, doubted the historical reliability of the Gospels not because they had historical evidence to do so, but due to a philosophical presupposition that miracles do not happen. Which is an assumption they could not have possibly obtained from reading the Gospels. It is something they brought to their reading. But where did they get it from? How did they know that miracles do not happen? 

Thus C. S. Lewis wrote Miracles, where he presses the question about the reliability of the Gospels to an even more essential question: “Can the events told in the Gospels – including their miracles and predictive prophecies – happen at all, or are they absolutely impossible?” 

That is a question the Gospels will not answer for us. It is a philosophical question we have to deal with before we approach the Gospels. If we conclude beforehand that certain stories in the Gospels cannot possibly happen, no amount of historical evidence will convince us. As Lewis says, if someone who disbelieves in angels one day sees an angel, he will probably say that it was an illusion. Supernatural experience will not convince someone who holds an anti-supernatural philosophy. “What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.” 

Likewise, what we learn from the Gospels depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to the Gospels. “It is no use going to the texts until we have some idea about the possibility or probability of the miraculous. Those who assume that miracles cannot happen are merely wasting their time by looking into the texts: we know in advance what results they will find for they have begun by begging the question.” 

Thus Lewis discusses miracles not on the ground of Experience but on the ground of Reason. Is it reasonable to believe in the (at least theoretical) possibility of miracles? (And by “miracle” is meant something that interferes with the natural processes of this universe, something that acts into Nature from above.) 

To greatly simplify his argument in Miracles, the answer to this question is so obvious that many people do not see it. They cannot see the wood for the trees. They forget that everyday they experience causes from outside of Nature acting into Nature. They forget about themselves. They – that is, Homo sapiens – have the ability to interfere with the natural processes of this universe. We are in a very real sense a miracle! 

Talking about Nature as if there were nothing unnatural about it and as if miracles were something utterly unreasonable is not well thought out, Lewis maintained. Miracles are theoretically reasonable because they are an interference with Nature, and our own experience demonstrates that Nature has already been interfered with. We are in it. Miracles are therefore nothing entirely different from what every human being has already experienced. 

This, of course, does not mean that miracles (other than the miracle of the human being) do in reality occur. It only means that they do not contradict Reason, and that they are not so foreign to our experience as some people would make us believe. They are not an insult to the order of existence, since such “insult” happens all the time by our hands. 

If one agrees with Lewis’ reasoning, one can start approaching the Gospels with an open mind instead of rejecting its miracles from the outset. 

(Read more about the issue of miracles as related to the Bible in The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible.)