Supernatural

Miracles 4.13 "That spearhead of the Supernatural which I call my reason links up with all my natural contents -- my sensations, emotions, and the like -- so completely that I call the mixture by the single word 'me'." Miracles 6.2 "To some people the great trouble about any argument for the Supernatural is simply the fact that argument should be needed at all. If so stupendous a thing exists, ought it not be obvious as the sun in the sky?" [of Pain|Problem of Pain 1:11] "[Awe, the Numinous] is either a mere twist in the human mind...... or else it is a direct experience of the really supernatural, to which the name Revelation might properly be given." [Problem of Pain|Problem of Pain 1:12,13] The Supernatural (Numinous) is linked to the Moral Law, by a stage which happens when "the Numinous power of which [men] feel awe is made the guardian of the morality to which they feel obligation." Lewis describes this as surprising, and very far from our natural desires. It leads on to the historical event of God becoming Man in Christ.

We may not believe in a flat earth and a sky-palace. But we must insist from the beginning that we believe, as firmly as any savage or theosophist, in a spirit- world which can, and does, invade the natural or phenomenal universe. //Horrid Red Things//, paragraph 4

To write a book on miracles, which are in a sense invasions of Nature, has made me realise Nature herself as I've never done before. You don't //see// Nature till you believe in the Supernatural: don't get the full, hot, salty tang of her except by contrast with the pure water from beyond the world. Those who mistake Nature for the All are just those who can never realise her as a //particular creature// with her own flawed, terrible, beautiful individuality. //Collected Letters,// to Dom Bede Griffiths, 10 May 1945

Earlier Xtian preachers were fighting for the Super-natural against Nature. What we are up against is the anti-Natural. The rehabilitation of the Natural (tho' only of course as a preliminary to its conquest by the Supernatural) seems to me the greatest service that a periodical [|cd. do] to-day. //Collected Letters,// to Laurence Whistler, April 1947

The tension you speak of (if it //is// a tension) between doing full & generous justice to the Natural while also paying unconditional & humble obedience to the Supernatural is to me an absolute key position. I have no use for mere //either//-//or// people (except, of course, in that last resort, when the choice, the plucking out the right eye, is upon us: as it is in some mode, every day. But even then a man needn’t abuse & blackguard his right eye. It was a good creature: it is my fault, not its, that I have got myself into a state wh. necessitates jettisoning it). //Collected Letters,// to Dom Bede Griffiths, 23 April 1951

When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith?" //The Great Divorce//, chapter 5, paragraph 29

It follows that, to them, the most mischievous people in the world are those who, like myself, proclaim that Christianity essentially involves the supernatural. They are quite sure that belief in the supernatural never will, nor should, be revived, and that if we convince the world that it must choose between accepting the supernatural and abandoning all pretence of Christianity, the world will undoubtedly choose the second alternative. It will thus be we, not the liberals, who have really sold the pass. We shall have re-attached to the name //Christian// a deadly scandal from which, but for us, they might have succeeded in decontaminating it. Letters to Malcolm, chapter 22, paragraph 3

To a layman, it seems obvious that what unites the Evangelical and the Anglo-Catholic against the 'Liberal' or 'Modernist' is something very clear and momentous, namely, the fact that both are thoroughgoing supernaturalists, who believe in the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Second Coming, and the Four Last Things. This unites them not only with one another, but with the Christian religion as understood //ubique et ab omnibus//.['everywhere and by all']

The point of view from which this agreement seems less important than their divisions, or than the gulf which separates both from any non-miraculous version of Christianity, is to me unintelligible. Perhaps the trouble is that as supernaturalists, whether 'Low' or 'High' Church, thus taken together, they lack a name. May I suggest 'Deep Church'; or, if that fails in humility, Baxter's 'mere Christians'? //God in the Dock// Part 4 Chapter 9, Mere Christians, last paragraph

The movement of one unit is incalculable, just as the result of tossing a coin once is incalculable: the majority movement of a billion units can however be predicted, just as, if you tossed a coin a billion times, you could predict a nearly equal number of heads and tails. Now it will be noticed that if this theory is true we have really admitted something other than Nature. If the movements of the individual units are events "on their own," events which do not interlock with all other events, then these movements are not part of Nature. It would be, indeed, too great a shock to our habits to describe them as //super//-natural. I think we should have to call them //sub//-natural. But all our confidence that Nature has no doors, and no reality outside herself for doors to open on, would have disappeared. There is apparently something outside her, the Subnatural; it is indeed from this Subnatural that all events and all "bodies" are, as it were, fed into her. And clearly if she thus has a back door opening on the Subnatural, it is quite on the cards that she may also have a front door opening on the Supernatural and events might be fed into her at that door too. //Miracles//, chapter 3, paragraph 2


 * THE METEORITE**

Among the hills a meteorite Lies huge; and moss has overgrown, And wind and rain with touches light Made soft, the contours of the stone.

Thus easily can Earth digest A cinder of sidereal fire, And make the translunary guest Thus native to an English shire.

Nor is it strange these wanderers Find in her lap their fitting place, For every particle that's hers Came at the first from outer space.

All that is Earth has once been sky; Down from the Sun of old she came, Or from some star that travelled by Too close to his entangling flame.

Hence, if belated drops yet fall From heaven, on these her plastic power Still works as once it worked on all The glad rush of the golden shower.

//Poems//