The Naturalist and the Supernaturalist

Big idea

Summary

Lewis defines his terms precisely before using them. The Naturalist holds that there is only one thing: Nature, understood as the whole interlocking system of events, each fully caused by earlier events within that same system, so that nothing exists which is not itself a part of, or fully produced by, this single total system. On this view even minds, thoughts, and choices are simply further events inside Nature, caused like everything else.

The Supernaturalist, by contrast, holds that at least one thing exists which is not merely a part of this interlocking system: something self-existent, which does not owe its being to anything prior, and on which the whole system of Nature itself ultimately depends. For the Christian Supernaturalist this self-existent reality is God; Nature is then not the whole of reality but something God has made, rather as an author's mind is not part of the story it invents, though the story depends entirely on the mind that tells it.

Lewis is careful to note several things this distinction is not. It is not simply the question of whether unusual events occur; a Naturalist could in principle accept very strange events, provided they are eventually explained as products of Nature's own hidden workings. And Supernaturalism does not require picturing God as literally located somewhere else in space, the way one room is separate from another; the relationship is one of ultimate dependence, not of local distance. Only once these definitions are clear, Lewis says, can the reader see what a miracle would actually have to be: not an anomaly within Nature explaining itself, but an act of the self-existent Something Else, entering Nature from outside its own total system.

Key points

• Naturalism: reality is one total interlocking system (Nature), and everything, including minds, is simply a further event caused within that system.
• Supernaturalism: at least one self-existent reality exists which does not depend on anything prior, and Nature itself depends upon it.
• The distinction is not about how strange or rare an event is, but about whether anything beyond the single total system of Nature exists at all.
• Supernatural dependence is not a matter of spatial location (God 'somewhere else'), but of Nature's whole being ultimately owing itself to something beyond it.
• A miracle, properly defined, can only be an act of this self-existent Something Else breaking in on Nature from outside its interlocking system — which is why the question of Naturalism versus Supernaturalism has to be settled before miracles can even be discussed.

Illustrations & analogies

• An author's mind, which is not itself a character or event inside the novel it writes yet is the reason the whole story exists, pictures how God could be the ground of Nature's existence without being simply one more thing located inside Nature.

For reflection and discussion

1. Before reading this chapter, would you have described yourself as more of a Naturalist or a Supernaturalist in Lewis's technical sense? Has the distinction changed how you'd answer?
2. Why does Lewis think it matters whether God is pictured as 'ultimately behind' Nature rather than merely 'somewhere else' within it?