Miracles[1] is one of C.S. Lewis’s most cherished works of apologetics. In an age when belief in miracles seems somewhat anachronistic, this book is all the more important.
Born in Ireland in 1898, C.S. Lewis became a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature at the University of Cambridge. This did not stop him from writing children’s books and even science fiction. However, it is his apologetic works that are most appreciated by Christians of all denominations. Miracles is one of Lewis’s most highly regarded works of this kind, especially since it seems somewhat anachronistic to believe in miracles nowadays.
A commonly cited reason for this is that scientific advancement has helped us to understand that certain events, such as the virgin birth or the resurrection, are simply impossible according to the laws of nature. But is that really the case? Didn’t people two thousand years ago know that a child cannot be born of a virgin, and didn’t they realise that once a person is dead, they remain so? Yes, they knew just as well as we do today.
It wasn’t their ignorance of the laws of nature that led them to believe in miracles (laws which, incidentally, are themselves a miracle, given that the probability of all the constants of nature having exactly the values required to make life possible is practically zero). They believed in these laws and, more importantly, in the One who gave them, who could sometimes and for certain reasons violate them, or more precisely, reaffirm them in a more subtle way.
Let’s take the miracle of the virgin birth as an example. Can life come into being without the help of a man? Yes, of course, but that is generally not how it happens. Yet, strange as it may seem, no woman or man has ever created a child. God gives life, and God makes it possible, even though God usually does so through parents.
However, this was not the case when He created the first human, nor when He sent the man who was God Himself into the world, thus beginning the new creation of all things. This fact did not, however, violate or alter the laws of life. Nor did it cause life to proceed in a different direction to what we have usually seen. Not yet!
But could life also move in the opposite direction? Well, yes, and the second great miracle of Christianity, the resurrection, shows us that one day the relentless wheel that has always turned from life towards death will turn around and move in the opposite direction, from death towards life. This will be the miracle of the New Creation. Miracles convinces the reader that, in the meantime, faith in the New Creation itself might be a “grand miracle”.
Carmen Alina Nedelcu holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from the University of Bucharest and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Academy of Economic Studies. She is an expert in cloud technologies and passionate about books.