We're Doing a Read-Along on C.S. Lewis's Miracles!

Read-Along, Book Club, and Companion Essays

The read-along/book club on C.S. Lewis’s Miracles is a go! In my last post I put out my feelers to see if my audience would be interested in doing a read-along after seeing how many folks continue to be blessed by

Jared Henderson

’s read-alongs on his Substack. It turns out, people really, really love C.S. Lewis and would love to do a read-along on his stuff—who woulda guessed? Probably everyone but me.

It’s really obvious that this would be a hit now that I think about it more. C.S. Lewis’s works are absolutely amazing, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t sure if there would be interest in a big read-along where a bunch of strangers read the same chapters at the same time, then read an essay about the chapters, then jump on a Zoom call and discuss it. But people are really excited about that prospect. So, we’re going to do it!

Why Pick This Book?

Why Miracles? Well, it’s C.S. Lewis’s most philosophical and theological book out of his massive corpus. It’s chalked full of really excellent insights, which are present in many of his obscure essays, but which are brought together all in one spot here in Miracles. It’s also one of CSL’s more recognizable titles, but I’ve found that many of the most ardent CSL readers have either started the book and bailed on it after the first couple of chapters, or have never read it at all. So, I’d like to remedy that since I think it’s one of his best. The book was prompted by a letter from Dorothy Sayers to Lewis bemoaning the lack of literature on miracles, so if you’re a Sayers fan, you have yet another reason to read it!

If a book called ‘Miracles’ doesn’t sound all that interesting to you, I get it. I did a deep dive into all things Lewis back in 2016 and 2017. It was an amazing 2-year study. I read everything except the full collected letters (though I read many of them) and the OHEL book—that thing’s a monster. I won’t pretend like I remember everything but it actually did change my life. I was reluctant to read Miracles because I thought it would be an evidentialist style apologetics book where he’s trying to prove Christianity from modern miracles claims or going over the evidence for the resurrection of Christ or something. That kind of thing isn’t super interesting to me—I mean it’s cool, but I much prefer straight up philosophy, theology, and philosophical apologetics/philosophy of religion type stuff.

As it turns out, that’s exactly what CSL’s book is all about. It’s full title is Miracles: A Preliminary Study. It’s a philosophical and theological book that prepares the way for a future conversation on specific miraculous claims. It’s really, really good, I promise!

An Informal Overview of the Contents of Miracles

CSL didn’t quite give Sayers her book on miracles, instead he wrote a kind of prolegomena to a study on miracles where he brings up the importance of one’s philosophy of fact and the role of presuppositions in worldview analysis and in the interpretation of experiences and data and historical claims.

CSL also advances a philosophical argument, called the Argument from Reason, against a naturalistic worldview which would preclude all miracles from the outset. He treats various red herrings often used in debates on miracles. He gets into the nature of the laws of nature and helps us determine what miracles are and are not. He broaches his version of the authorial analogy for the God-World relation, that is that God is like an author and the world is like God’s novel. He covers various doctrines like the trinity, Christology, and gives a new spin on the ancient doctrine of God, calling Him the Fact of All Facthood, of the Ultimate Fact, which helps him explicate God’s self-existence (some of this is surely a result of his interactions with the British Idealist who came just before him (Lewis tutored either F.H. Bradley or Bernard Bosanquet’s nephew in philosophy! (I’ll double check and find out which but it was one of them (!), which is super cool))).

CSL also gives us a treatment of the principle of induction (that law that says nature is uniform and says that the future will be like the past—a presupposition of all scientific inquiry) and gives us a criterion for adjudicating when a genuine miracle has occurred.

But wait! There’s still more! CSL goes over what he calls “The Grand Miracle”, which is the Incarnation, and gives us a theology of religions wherein all the best aspects are subsumed in Christianity. He gives a brief free will theodicy, classifies the different kinds of miracles found in Scripture, explains the miracle of new creation, argues against philosophical monism and even predicts recent philosophical trends like cosmopsychism—a priority monist philosophy of mind wherein the whole cosmos is conscious, put forth most vigorously today by Philip Goff.

And there’s even more to the book too, including fantastic turns-of-phrase which will stick with you the rest of your life.

If there are words and phrases above that you’re unfamiliar with, no worries! I will explain them all in my companion essays and if I miss something, you can ask me in any one of the 3 zoom call book club sessions. If I don’t know something you ask me, I will ask one of my mentors and get back to you with an answer. Many of my mentors are CSL nuts, including Dr. Jerry Root, who is a world-renowned CSL scholar—the guy wrote his PhD under Basil Mitchell on CSL and the problem of evil, and knows just about everything there is to know about him. It would be my absolute pleasure to bring your question to Jerry or any of my other mentors.

Read-Along Schedule

So, here’s what I’m thinking, a 6-week read-along broken up into the following sections with 3 zoom calls for paid subscribers and a companion essay from me for each week’s readings:

March 31st - Chapters 1-2 – World-and-life views, presuppositions, and the philosophy of fact

April 7^th - Chapters 3-6 – Definitions and the Argument(s) from Reason

Zoom Call for Paid Subscribers

April 14^th – Chapters 7-8 – common objections to miracles, the nature of nature, and what miracles are not

April 21^st - Chapters 9-12 – The Author Analogy, The Ultimate Fact, Doctrine of God

Zoom Call for Paid Subscribers

April 28^th - Chapters 13-14 – Presuppositions and Argument from Reason revisited, Criterion of Miracles, a Theology of Religions

May 5^th – Chapters 15-Appendix B – The True Myth, One vs. Two-Floor Realities, Against Monism, Author Analogy Revisited

Zoom Call for Paid Subscribers

So that’s 6 weeks to read through the book and 6 companion essays from me helping us explore the chapters we just read. So, start whenever you’d like but have chapters 1 & 2 completed by March 31^st for the release of my companion essay, and then so on and so forth with the rest of the dates and companion essays. Then you can drop your thoughts and questions in the comment section of my Substack post and we as a read-along group can help each other think the chapters through.

After every 2 weeks of readings, we’ll have a Zoom call for paid subscribers (those who support my work here on Substack as paid subs, on Patreon as Patrons, and on YouTube as YouTube Members). I will send out Zoom links in paid posts beforehand. In our Zoom sessions I’ll lead the conversation on the chapters from the previous 2 weeks’ readings and we’ll have a lot of fun chopping it up I’ll also record those sessions and put them out for paid subscribers to watch back or watch if they weren’t able to make the live sessions.

On Companion Essay Style

In my companion essays I will help you learn philosophy and theology. If you’re worried that the book will be too far over your head, don’t be. It can get deep at points but Lewis is a spectacular writer and he’s writing for a lay audience. Sometimes he goes a tiny bit too deep for some lay folks but I will help you understand and appreciate what he’s saying. If my companion pieces still miss the mark, you can ask me, and the rest of the reading group, your questions in the comment section of each post. And then on top of that, if you’re a paid subscriber on any of my platforms, you’ll be able to ask me your questions in the book club Zoom sessions. If I don’t know the answer, and if no one else in the group knows, I can ask Drs. Jerry Root, Kevin Vanhoozer, Paul Gould, Paul Copan, Austin Freeman, Michael Ward, Thomas Ward, Robert Garcia or any number of my other former professors, mentors, and current friends.

I will also add deeper insights for those we are more philosophically and/or theologically minded. These sections will be in italics so those who don’t want to be über egg-heads can just skip over these sections. I’ll deal with finer points of the philosophy of mind and epistemology and Christology, etc. in these sections. I may do an entire bonus post on the Argument from Reason since I’ve done a lot of work on it myself and have been researching it for years and years and have had some of the world’s leading scholars on the argument on my podcast to discuss their work on it. So that intricate stuff will make its way into the italic portions or into a bonus post outside the 6 companion essays I’m committed to. I may also add some additional essays like an intro to the life and work of CSL

So, it’s on! I’ll have to poll my paid subscribers to nail down the exact dates and times for the Zoom calls but ideally, they will be after the second weeks companion piece is out so the paid subscribers have a chance to read it and discuss.

Where I’m At So Far

I haven’t been this excited and nervous about a project in a long time. Excited because it’s one of my favorite books and I try to read it every year. It’ll be so cool to hear everyone’s thoughts on Lewis’s reasonings, even if you vehemently disagree with him or my interpretation of him. Nervous because I have a ton to say about the book and it’ll be wild to put my thoughts on it out there into the world.

I’ve already started outlining my essays. As of today, I have chapters 1 and 2 outlined and I’ve started rereading the original chapter 3 and Elizabeth Anscombe’s essay critiquing the argument therein. That’s such a fun debate and I’m excited to share it with you all. Lewis ended up modifying his argument and the chapter 3 we have now is more nuanced and advances a different argument than his original. I have a first edition UK and a first edition USA version of Miracles with the original chapter 3 in them and I will post pictures of the argument in my companion piece on ch. 3 or my bonus piece on the Arg. from Reason.

Thanks for jumping in to all those who are planning on it. This will be a lot of work, even if I’m loving it. If you like my stuff and this project, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help support this kind of work. And drop me a comment here to let me know if you’re going to be joining the read-along.

If this one goes well, I’d definitely be up for doing more read-alongs in the future.

I don’t know why Miracles isn’t listed on Amazon right now, maybe it’s out of print, but you can find it here or on Ebay or a copy on Amazon from a 3rd party seller. Luckily we’ll be going by chapters and not page numbers so it doesn’t matter a ton which copy you get as long as it’s not a 1st edition (which are actually hard to find).

So, onward! Into one of C.S. Lewis’s greatest works!