C.S. Lewis: I’m not a fundamentalist

This is a C.S. Lewis quote about how to read the bible that is probably equally irritating to fundamentalists and modernist/liberal christians, but it makes a lot of sense to me:

“I have been suspected of being what is called a Fundamentalist. That is because I never regard any narrative as unhistorical simply on the ground that it includes the miraculous. Some people find the miraculous so hard to believe that they cannot imagine any reason for my acceptance of it other than a prior belief that every sentence of the Old Testament has historical or scientific truth. But this I do not hold, any more than St. Jerome did when he said that Moses described Creation “after the manner of a popular poet” (as we should say, mythically) or than Calvin did when he doubted whether the story of Job were history or fiction. The real reason why I can accept as historical a story in which a miracle occurs is that I have never found any philosophical grounds for the universal negative proposition that miracles do not happen.”

C.S. Lewis, reflections on the psalms

I have no problem with accepting insights from bible criticism and modern theology (although there’s a lot of reductionistic rubbish too, that seems to be written from the point of wanting to believe everything but a ‘traditional’ reading), but I’ve never had any interest in the idea that miracles are a mark that a story is myth, and cannot have happened. I do have not only philosophical but even experiential reasons to believe in the possibility of miracles even…

There might be othere reasons to doubt that certain (OT) stories are more likely more or less mythical and not completely historical (or completely not, I wouldn’t care if Job was just a literary story to convey its philosophical message…) Not believing in the supernatural is one modern error, but thinking that a bible verse can only be inspired and to our benefit if it’s completely historical is another one from the opposite side….

What do you people think?

shalom

Bram

Reclaiming supernaturalism III: on small coincidence miracles

At the pastoralia blog there is a very interesting discussion about smal coincidences and litte miracles, with the question if they are just coincidences or God. Jason gives an example of lost keys that were freakily found again (read it yourself) and he frames it as free will, but I’ll look at it from a totally different angle. Free will and providence don’t seem to exclude each other anyway for me…

Re-reading it my explanation that I’ve worked out here could not be relevant, for I don’t see him praying for those keys, but the things that have worked this way in my life were… And I’ve been thinking about those things from a different angle, and some aspects of it might be a bit ‘flashy’ and both ‘unorthodox’ from a charismatic view and totally ‘unscientific’. I have had a lot of ‘small coincidence miracles’ in my life, even though I tend to forget them. And I can not deny that there must be at least something beyond the material stuff we know behind them.

If it’s God acting, then woe to me! Why do I only have faith fo pray in faith for small insignificant things? Why don’t I have faith to pray in the same way for things that matter? I don’t know, and it’s very frustrating that most of the time that I have faith like a musterd seed only for things
most of the time that I have faith like a musterd seed only for things smaller than one… If it’s been GOd, the I have been faithfull in the futile and totaly unable in anything that matters…

And now for the flashy part: If it’s not God, what is it then? The power of faith and positive thinking is not only somehing that works psychologically nor something that only calls on spiritual beings to do something for us (God, demons, angels, whatever) but it must be an unknown power that lies in our own spirit. I would definitely place it in the category of what people call ‘paranormal’, or in the field of what we’ve left behind when we built up a whole science system on the materialistic dimension of the world. Things that might be a part of humans as spiritual beings, who don’t know about the abilities of their spiritual side… (I do think a lot of the ‘occult’ falls into the same category, not done by any kind of demons, but by the human spirit itself, which is not to say I don’t believe in evil spiritual entities, I can’t deny them at all) So what I say is that strong faith and willpower focussed in the right way can sometimes manipulate the physical world and do things that seem impossible. I know, it sounds magical and unscientific, but I am a supernaturalist after all, and this is by definition beyond the physical realm of science…

And now I’m reminded of Adrian Plass in one of his sacred diaries, who wants to unfold a paperclip ‘in faith’ I don’t dismiss psychokinesis, but I don’t see how God or demons could have anything to do with it.

And by the way, I think some of the miracles of some strayed-away hypercharismatics must be in the same category. They are so trained in the spiritual side that they wouldn’t even notice if they’ve scared away the spirit and doing it in their own power now (and sometimes they might be channeling something else too)

(and now everybody looks at me, yells ‘freak’ and never takes me serious anymore…)

shalom

Bram