Preface

Big idea

Summary

Lewis opens by distinguishing two very different kinds of question people run together when they discuss a miracle. One is historical: did this particular reported event actually occur, and what is the evidence for it? The other is philosophical, and comes first: is the universe the kind of place in which an event like that could occur at all? He insists the second question has to be settled, at least provisionally, before the first can be usefully asked, because a person's answer to it will quietly decide in advance how much evidence for a miracle they are willing to accept, no matter how good that evidence turns out to be.

He illustrates this with the far-fetched but pointed case of a man who has already decided, on philosophical grounds, that ghosts cannot exist. Such a man, Lewis says, will not stop disbelieving in ghosts merely because he is shown one; he will assume he is dreaming, or hallucinating, or the victim of a trick, because his framework has already ruled the alternative out. In just the same way, a thoroughgoing Naturalist reading the Gospels will always have a way of explaining away a resurrection report, however good the historical case, because for him the event described has already been excluded before the evidence is weighed.

This, Lewis says, is why he is writing a book almost entirely of philosophy and hardly any history. Most modern doubt about the New Testament miracles, he suggests, does not actually come from a careful historical study of the documents; it comes from a prior conviction, absorbed from the intellectual atmosphere, that miracles are the kind of thing that simply do not happen. Only once that prior conviction has been examined on its own terms is there any point in turning to the historical question of what actually happened at, say, the empty tomb — a question Lewis explicitly sets aside for this preliminary study, planning to take it up only very briefly, and only at the very end, in the chapters on the Grand Miracle.

He closes by naming his central distinction for the whole book: Naturalism, the view that Nature is the whole show, with nothing outside or behind it; and Supernaturalism, the view that something beyond Nature exists, on which Nature depends. Everything else in the book, Lewis says, will turn on which of these two views a reader is prepared to accept, since only if Supernaturalism is true is there anything that could ever break in and work a miracle in the first place.

Key points

• The book is deliberately philosophical rather than historical: it asks whether miracle is possible before asking whether any particular miracle happened.
• A prior belief that miracles cannot happen will always find a way to explain away even strong evidence that one did.
• Lewis therefore postpones nearly all discussion of the Gospel evidence itself to the closing chapters, after the philosophical groundwork is laid.
• The book's whole argument will turn on one distinction: Naturalism (Nature is all there is) versus Supernaturalism (something beyond Nature exists and Nature depends on it).

Illustrations & analogies

• The man who refuses to believe in a ghost even after seeing one, because his own settled philosophy has already ruled ghosts out, models how the whole miracle debate usually runs: the evidence is rarely the real issue, the prior framework is.

For reflection and discussion

1. Before you read further, which question do you find yourself asking first when someone reports a miracle: “did this really happen?” or “could something like this happen at all?” Why?
2. Can you think of a belief of your own, religious or otherwise, that quietly decides in advance how you will interpret any new evidence you meet?