There is no manner of security against miracles. One may be in for
anything.
© C.S. Lewis Foundation, 2001
4
illusions, you will find them exhorting us to work for posterity, to educate, revolutionize,
liquidate, live and die for the sake of the human race.” Do you think most Naturalists live with
these types of contradictions?
Answers to Misgivings
(12)“The Supernatural is not remote and abstruse: it is a matter of daily and hourly experience.”
Do you think there is a temptation to see the Supernatural as “remote”? What is the popular
understanding of the Supernatural?
A Chapter of Red Herrings
(13)Lewis challenges the idea that belief in miracles was more prevalent in the past because
people were more ignorant of Natural laws. Do you think this is still a widespread
assumption today? How does Lewis show it to be a groundless objection?
(14)“The real question is why the spatial insignificance of Earth, after being asserted by Christian
moralists for some fifteen centuries, without the slightest suspicion that it conflicted with
their theology, should suddenly in quite modern times have been set up as a stock argument
against Christianity and enjoyed, in that capacity, a brilliant career.” Why?
(15)“It is a profound mistake to imagine that Christianity ever intended to dissipate the
bewilderment and even the terror, the sense of our own nothingness, which comes upon us
when we think about the nature of things… without such sensations there is no religion.” Do
you agree with Lewis that a sense of bewilderment and even terror should be a necessary part
of our response to the universe around us?
Miracles and the Laws of Nature
(16)How does Lewis distinguish between different conceptions of how the “Laws” of Nature
work? Why, in his opinion, do we call them “laws”?
(17)Miracles, says Lewis, do not really “break” the Laws of Nature. Why?
A Chapter Not Strictly Necessary
(18)“To treat her [Nature] as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of
her.” What is Lewis’ perspective on how we are to appreciate Nature?
Horrid Red Things
(19)In this chapter Lewis suggests that Christianity is the only religion that depends, for its
overall coherence, on the authenticity of miracles. Why? Do you agree with him?
(20)Do you think Lewis does a good job of explaining how a non-believer with a
normal, scientific education finds the traditional images of Christianity hard to deal with? What
other things might he or she find difficult?
(21) How does Lewis distinguish between thought and imagination, and leading on from this,
between the essentials and non-essentials of a belief? Do you think he is right to say that these
things are non-essential?