Miracles: A Preliminary Study

by C.S. Lewis

The cover of my copy states the purpose of this book: "For the reader who has difficulty in finding use for miracles, the author restores them to their reasonable place as part of God's way with man." The back cover elaborates a little more: "This is a book about the possibility of God's intervention in Nature and human affairs." Lewis says, "This book is intended as a preliminary to historical inquiry. I am not a trained historian and I shall not examine the historical evidence for the Christian miracles. My effort is to put the readers in a position to do so" (8-9).

Lewis approaches miracles with the aim to first prove that they're possible and then discuss what they mean. The majority of this volume is spent on the former task. He attacks monism, naturism and pantheism—and perhaps other anti-miraculous worldviews—with shrewd logic laying bare their philosophical fallacies. His logic is simple to understand and his illustrations are apt. At the end of those chapters, the reader will be quite convinced that miracles are not outside the scope of the possible.

Then, he turns to what miracles mean. His first chapter in this regard is on the Incarnation. After reading thirteen wonderfully written and thought-provoking chapters, this one disappointed and baffled me. I'm not sure if I was too tired to be reading this chapter productively, if it was over my head, or if it was just a bad chapter (incidentally, the chapter titled "A Chapter Not Strictly Necessary" was worthwhile), but something didn't work in this chapter. And it didn't help that it was the longest chapter in the book.

In the last two chapters, he divided the miracles of Jesus into "Miracles of the Old Creation" and "Miracles of the New Creation." "Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written or will write, in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvas of Nature. They focus at a particular point either God's actual, or His future, operations on the universe. When they reproduce operations we have already seen on the large scale they are miracles of the Old Creation: when they focus on those which are still to come they are miracles of the New" (140). These last two chapters show more of Lewis' theology than any other, so you'll find yourself disagreeing with him more here than anywhere else (though probably not a whole lot even here). Overall, these chapters were valuable also.

So, aside from one chapter—which I'm willing to chalk up to a deficiency on my part—this was an excellent, thought-provoking, and completely worthwhile read.

The Editors do not advocate everything taught by the authors of the books we review. Like us, these authors are fallible humans and those who choose to read these books should measure them by the bible, the one true standard.