The Resurrection Changed Everything | C.S. Lewis's Miracles chs. 15 & 16

Companion Essay and 3rd Zoom Book Club Meeting Recording

Welcome to the Parker’s Ponderings read-along of Miracles by C.S. Lewis. This is the seventh companion essay I’ve put out and in it I’ll be covering chapters 15 and 16 of the book.

scroll all the way to the bottom to find the recording of the 3rd and final zoom book club session as well!

If you’re just discovering this read-along for the first time, you can catch up by reading companion essays below:

Essays on chapters 1&2, on chapter 3, on chapters 4-6, on chapters 7&8 on chapter’s 9-12, and chapter 13, chapter 14.

Ch. 15 – Miracles of The Old Creation

CSL continues on with his ‘fitness’ criterion for judging miracle claims which he’s been elucidating for a few chapters now. He says on pg. 216 that the Christian apologist need not deny or seek to disprove every miracle account which was observed by pagans or performed outside of the faith, for all he knows, God has worked through pagans plenty. But he goes on to claim that “the Christian miracles have a much greater intrinsic probability in virtue of their organic connection with one another and with the whole structure of the religion they exhibit.” (216). He says that some miracles put forth by particular religions are at odds with the plausibility of the religion. If miracle x actually happened, then what would the world have to look like according to the religion putting it forward? Does the world actually look like the world described by said religion? (no). So, the fitness criterion actually does a ton of work for CSL, both is making sense of Christian miracles and explaining why Christians rule out many or most non-Christian miracle claims without sheer question-begging.

He then gives us two ways of classifying Christian miracles. The first way has 6 classes and the second way has just 2, but they are both covering the same phenomena.

The First Way of Classifying Christian Miracles (218-219)

(1) Miracles of Fertility

(2) Miracles of Healing

(3) Miracles of Destruction

(4) Miracles of Domination Over the Inorganic

(5) Miracles of Reversal

(6) Miracles of Perfecting or Glorification

The Second Way of Classifying Christian Miracles

(1) Miracles of Old Creation

These kinds of miracles reproduce operations which we’ve already seen. We’ve seen water turned into wine through lots of steps in-between. Water helps make grapes. Grapes are stepped on in a press. Grape juice is fermented. Boom, wine. When God turns water into wine in a miraculous way, He skips many stems and just takes the water right to the end point of wine—and good wine at that. CSL says that in these kinds of miracles, God is showing himself to be the true Baccus or Genius, the true fertility God, the true Corn-King. Indeed, no crops grow without His say and no wombs are opened without God. But these old creation miracles bring us more of what we’re already used to.

(2) Miracles of New Creation

Miracles of the new creation focus on things which are still to come. These are miracles which testify to future abilities and states of affairs when the new heavens meet the new earth and humans have new glorified resurrection bodies. So walking on water, dead being raised to life, transfiguration of Christ, resurrection of Christ in a new body not just the old like in the case of Lazarus, and ascension of Christ to the heavenly realm.

CSL utilizes the second way to classify the first way, which should look something like this:

(1) Miracles of the Old Creation

a. Miracles of Fertility

b. Miracles of Healing

c. Miracles of Destruction

d. Miracles of Domination over the Inorganic (transition between Old and New, include both)

(2) Miracles of New Creation

a. Miracles of Domination over the Inorganic (transition between Old and New, include both)

b. Miracles of Reversal

c. Miracles of Perfecting or Glorification

Chapter 16 – Miracles of the New Creation

I don’t have a ton to say about this chapter as I think it’s pretty straight forward and straightforwardly true at that. But here are just a few notes:

In chapter 16, CSL emphasizes the Resurrection of Christ as the prime miracle of the new creation. If the resurrection is true then an entirely new mode of being has begun in the cosmos. Human beings will not go on to live in an ethereal realm like a Valhalla or the American conception of heaven, but instead will be given new, glorified bodies, and will continue to be psycho-physical composite beings once again—like the risen Christ.

CSL emphasizes the difference between the resurrection of Lazarus and Christ, arguing that the case of Lazarus was anticipatory for Christ—the death of Lazarus was wound back but ultimately play out again as Lazarus was bone once and died twice (246). The case of Christ’s resurrection was to new life, it transcended death and opened up the way for eternal life to anyone who trust in his sacrifice and changes their mind about themselves and God.

Right after the his discussion on the difference between the resurrections of Lazarus and Jesus, CSL brings up one of my favorite objections to Christian physicalism, i.e., the view that we are wholly material beings and will be resurrected to with the same material that comprises us. I like to call the objection the shark objection but I explain after this helpful quote from pg. 246:

It is presumably a foolish fancy (not justified by the words of Scripture) that each spirit should recover those particular units of matter which he ruled before. For one thing, they would not be enough to go round: we all live in second-hand suits and there are doubtless atoms in my chin which have served many another man, many a dog, many an eel, many a dinosaur. Nor does the unity of our bodies, even in this present life, consist in retaining the same particles. My form remains one, though the matter in it changes continually. I am, in that respect, like a curve in a waterfall. (246)

I love this. I like to call it the shark objection because every time I object to Christian physicalist views I bring up the scenario of being eaten by a shark. Say I’m eaten by a shark. The shark starts to digest my body and his body starts using the atoms that comprised mine to start replace its own dying and dead cells, say on its fins. Then say the shark that ate me is caught by a fisherman who kills the shark and eats its fins. The fisherman’s body starts incorporating those shark-fin atoms into the fisherman. He dies. The next day Christ returns and raises the dead to be judged. Do the atoms which once belonged to my body which are not comprising the fisherman’s body belong to him or me? Will Christ rip them out of the fisherman and rip the residual atoms out of the decomposing shark and give them back to me? I don’t think so.

I think what matters for the resurrection is that it is our soul informing our bodies which makes them ours, not the numerical identity of the very same molecules or atoms. And of course, CSL makes this case against the physicalism in a more succinct and enjoyable way above.

I’ll leave my commentary of chapter 16 with this fantastic quote by Lewis on what theologians call the extra calvinisticum:

Most certainly, beyond all worlds, unconditioned and unimaginable, transcending discursive thought, there yawns for ever the ultimate Fact, the fountain of all other facthood, the burning and undimensioned depth of the Divine life. Most certainly also, to be united with that life in the eternal Sonship of Christ is, strictly speaking, the only thing worth a moment’s consideration. And in so far as that is what you mean by Heaven, Christ’s divine Nature never left it, and therefore never returned to it: and His human nature ascended thither not at the moment of the Ascension but at every moment. (253)

The extra calvinisticum started as a pejorative term that Lutherans leveled against the followers of John Calvin but it stuck and now it’s a technical term. It’s just the idea, expressed by CSL in the quote above, that the Divine Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Divine Son, was fully united to his human nature but the divine nature was not fully contained in the human nature. So the person of Jesus Christ is truly God and Truly man in his hypostatic union, but while he was being crucified on the cross, he was also at the very same time, holding all things in the cosmos together—including that cross he was being crucified on.

Appendix B

Okay I am tired. These companion essays were way harder than I thought. The essays for the next read along should be much easier. I will announce the next book in the next couple of posts. But for now I really want to wrap this read-along up and as much as I’d love to comment on all the extras, I can’t do it. I considered not addressing them at all and just leaving off with chapter 16 but I had to comment on Appendix B and the author analogy CSL utilizes therein. Here’s the quote:

In the play, Hamlet, Ophelia climbs out on a branch overhanging a river: the branch breaks, she falls in and drowns. What would you reply if anyone asked, ‘Did Ophelia die because Shakespeare for poetic reasons wanted her to die at that moment—or because the branch broke?’ I think one would have to say, ‘For both reasons.’ Every event in the play happens as a result of other events in the play, but also every event happens because the poet wants it to happen. All events in the play are shakespearian events; similarly all events in the real world are providential events. All events in the play, however, come about (or ought to come about) by the dramatic logic of events. Similarly all events in the real world (except miracles) come about by natural causes. ‘Providence’ and Natural causation are not alternatives; both determine every event because both are one. (291)

I absolutely love this analogy. Shakespeare is sovereign over the events of his play, and yet there are ‘intranarratival’ reasons for Ophelia’s death—there are two levels of causation at play. If you’re interested in reading more about this analogy, I actually wrote my 120-page systematic theology master’s thesis on it and published it in 5 installments here on Parker’s Ponderings. Check out the first one right here.

Okay. Whew! That was a lot! If you’ve struck with me on this read along then you’re a champ! Great work! If you’ve come along after the fact and read at your own pace or even discovered these companion essays months or years later, congrats as well for making it through! Do you see why this is CSL’s most difficult philosophical work but why you should still read it for the theological treasures? Good, me too.

Next up is Dune. There I spoiled the surprise. We’re going to read Dune starting in June 2025. I want to say 6 weeks but that may be fast. It’s long but it’s a novel so it should be a much quicker read than Miracles. 6 to 8 weeks. We’ll see. The companion essays will still be focused on philosophical and theological insights but they will look a lot different than these. Hopefully much shorter, and will focus more on particular aphorisms or background theories to the philosophy at play in given portions. It’s going to be very fun! I hope you’ll join me in June!

Thanks again for all the support and if you’ve enjoyed this as a free subscriber please consider upgrading to paid to help me fund this kind of work.

-Parker

find the 3rd book club recording below