Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: As Lewis says, all these miracles interlock in a forward direction. That when Jesus turns water into wine, you can get drunk on it, but water won't go into wine by itself. That's not natural. But if he turns it into wine, it's going to act like wine. But he hasn't broken any law. He's just added something.
You.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Welcome to the Catholic Theology Show, presented by Ave Maria University. This podcast is sponsored in part by Annunciation Circle, a community that supports the mission of Ave Maria University through their monthly donations of $10 or more. If you'd like to support this podcast and the mission of Ave Maria University, I encourage you to visit avemaria.edu join for more information.
I'm your host, Michael Doffine. And today we are joined by father Joseph Fesio, the founder and editor of Ignatius Press and visiting professor of theology at Ave Marie University. Welcome to the show, Father.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Thank you, Michael. Good seeing you again after many years. I did see you last year, but there was a yes, yes.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: We're so happy to have you back. And, of course, Father Fesio was the founding and founding provost founding provost of Ave Marie University, which meant that there.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Was no title around that they had to invent that title.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: It was great to have you here, and we're glad to have you back.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: But at that time, the academic vice president who reported to me did all the work. It was Michael Daffonay, as I recall.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Well, those were great days in helping to found and build up the they.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Were they're coming back. All those who want to donate, please do, because I was here during what I call the golden age of Avi Maria, really, the students were phenomenal, tremendous faculty, which you are big part in hiring those faculty. But we went through some lean ears, I would say. And I think now with President Midendorf, there's a resurgence of what we really were at the beginning. And I'm really happy to be back and see.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: A great it's encouraging to hear you say that, especially for those of us that have been kind of laboring day in and day out. And I really do feel like, yes, today's a good day. Today's a good day. And it's great to see Ave Maria continuing to flourish after so many years.
And so one of the fun things is you're actually here teaching a course on C. S. Lewis's miracles. And it's kind of fascinating because I think if people think about Ignatius Press, you have a lot of very Catholic authors, and yet you've always had a great love of C. S. Lewis. And so I've certainly shared that and share that. But could you just say a little bit about how did you discover Lewis in your own sure.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Well, he became a Catholic on November 22, 1963. That's when he died.
I'm not sure when I began reading this. I did not read Chronicles of Narnia as a child, but when I was a contract chaplain for the US. Army while I doing my doctoral studies in Germany. And that meant there was a contract which said, item priest quantity, one cost per unit $500. I was on a contract on the weekends to come and celebrate Mass for the GIS soldiers at Omberg, the third of the second ACR unit there. And this was the first year of the Volar, the volunteer army. And a lot of these kids who had joined the army because be all you can be and everything else, all of a sudden they're in Germany, don't speak the language, don't understand what's going on. The culture away from home for the first time, realize it's not as great as it was in the pictures.
There was a lot of decadence among the especially the younger men there. And there was a group of Christians, Catholics, and Protestants who met and prayed and who felt that their mission was to try and be a bearer of Christ to these young men. And so I was part of that group. And we began reading C. S. Lewis. And we didn't read screw tape letters. I read that later, I think, as he thinks is not one of his best books, but we started reading almost everything by C. S. Lewis. And then later, I think after that two years that I was there, I read Till We Have Faces, which is one of the books that many Lewis fans don't even know about, but he thought was his best book, and I agree with him in his judgment of that. And so C. S. Lewis has been kind of a constant in my own reading habits since that 1972, basically.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: That's great, too, to see that ability to help recover people, to strengthen people in their faith, especially for both going deep into the tradition and at the same time looking outward and being a light to others in this kind of evangelical spirit. It's, I think, something in my mind that a lot of people do find in Lewis. Lewis kind of has this odd balance between being a great apologist and at the same time he kind of just retrieves so much of the wonderful tradition that we have.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Yes. And I think the course that Joseph Pearson and I are teaching is on Tolkien, Lewis, and Chesson. All three of them were, I think, great apologists writers, catholic writers of the 20th century. Chessner was not a scholar like Lewis and Tolkien were, but they were true scholars. I mean, really did tremendous work in their own field of scholarship, but were able to express that in ways that were accessible to pretty much everybody. I liken it a bit to Pope Benedict. Pope Benedict was a true scholar, and yet when he writes, it's very limpid. It's profound, but the clarity and the depth is there.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Yeah. So today we wanted to talk a little bit or really focus our attention on one book by Lewis, a book called Miracles. I think one time he described if he were going to set up his book, miracles would be like the cathedral a if you were to set up all the different books that he'd written. And Miracles is kind of like it is almost like a class. It's hard. When I teach a course on Lewis, I would probably say pretty consistently, miracles is the hardest book we read, and it's one that some students really enjoy, but a lot of students struggle with it.
I think it really is kind of a work that's really worth reading, but it also requires a little bit of assistance. And one thing that I know that you have been teaching Miracles by C. S. Lewis off and on for 40, 46 years. 46 years. So it was one of the books that you picked when you first started teaching as a that's right. Young Jesuit out in California.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: That's right. And when I came here, 2003, I taught it here as well, so 20 years ago. Yeah. And now I'm back again doing it. And I think it's a classic, a true classic. I think in one sense, it's his most important book. But no one else agrees with me on that.
But I have since I've read this, which was written 1947, so it's even older than when I began teaching it.
I have found no book of apologetics for the existence of God and the evidence for his intervention in nature, which is a miracle, and his main intervention, which is Christ.
Nothing so comprehensive, nothing so clearly written, nothing so powerful. And it's also he studied the greats he decided philosophy. I think he taught medieval literature, but he was a great writer. And because he had such a broad knowledge of other writers I mean, every chapter begins with a little epigraph which perfectly encapsulates the point he's trying to make. And every chapter fits in organically.
It needs to be there. It follows what went before. It introduces what comes after it. I don't think there's a sentence in this book which is not needed or is out of place. I just think it's a beautifully written book. And there's so many fundamental insights in this book, fundamental insights that especially college students need to confront. So I'm happy somewhat with the fact that Avri Maria, for example, has added a lot of majors.
We had a kinesthetics there was a sports medicine major or something like that or something.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Exercise physiology, that was it.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: Yeah. She was a waitress at the pub. I spent a lot of time in the pub while I'm here with Joseph Pierce. But so when you got to those majors, then you have people having to take certain courses which are kind of technical courses or technological courses or courses of instruction on techniques as opposed to the liberal arts in the truest sense. And so I think it's even more important that the liberal arts courses here are meaty, are not wasting time on frivolous things, but really getting to the heart of things. And I think this book does that. I'm happy, by the way, that I understand that you've added metaphysics back to the core curriculum. How can you have a Catholic university with a philosophy requirement and not a metaphysics? I mean, how did that happen? Michael anyway, we'll get into that. And then you brought back the literature courses, too. So I think that's all to the good. But on the one hand, students need to get a broad exposure to all sorts of great writers and great artists and great poets and dramatists and so on.
But four years isn't a lot of time. You got to take some books and go deep. The Bible, of course, is one that you've got on the desk there, but I think this is one of those books you go into carefully, chapter by chapter, word by word.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, that's a really wonderful praise for a book to be able to especially one that you've been teaching for 46 years and still find so kind of worthy of your time and of students time. And it's interesting if you describe it that way in some ways, thinking about what a university is doing, what Ave Maria seeks to do. It really is that element of that core curriculum that complements and really prepares people for more specialized study at the level of the majors. And it is interesting to think about Almost Miracles by C. S. Lewis as almost a mini core curriculum because it's interesting within it.
It has ways of understanding the relationship between the natural sciences and philosophy. It has kind of philosophical arguments for nature, philosophical arguments for God, philosophical arguments for creation. It also has philosophical arguments and understandings for miracles. And yet at the same time, it also deals a lot with then revelation and how Christ comes in as the grand miracle at the end, as he puts it. So it almost does kind of encapsulate not everything in the core curriculum, but it almost is a and it's not easy in that way. Just know studying philosophy and theology is.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Hard work and core means know central. And I use this as my textbook for my book on revelation, christology and this Revelation. What is revelation? God is speaking to us. Well, is there a God? If there's not, no one is speaking, right? Can he speak to us?
That's the first part of this book. Then the question is are miracles possible? But then, well, has he spoken? What's the evidence? If you don't think they're possible, if you're a naturalist and materialist, well, of course no amount of evidence will convince you, right? But if you do believe there's a God, you might believe there's God. He's a very distant God. The Deist God? Well, he's not going to intervene. So we can know there's a god and Lewis gives us a way of knowing. I think Thomas has five ways. Lewis is a different way, actually, than the five ways. Thomas, I think. Would you say that, Michael? Would you say that his way? Which is the fact that we must accept that reasoning is valid and if it's valid, it can't be dependent upon nature.
Would that fit in one of Thomas's five ways, or is this a six way? And I don't know the answer. I'm just asking.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: I really would think and I think it'd be fun to talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But I would say I think it is a six way. It's kind of somewhat presupposed in the five ways by Aquinas, because Aquinas is never thinking about when he talks about the cosmological arguments or the arguments from change or motion or from order in the universe or hierarchies of goodness in the universe and these sorts of different elements.
He's never saying that you would see this if you just looked at the world as a machine.
You can only see that because you're a reasoning being who discovers intelligibility in the world. But I would say that in some sense, reason is presupposed in how Aquinas develops the arguments for the existence of God. And by the way, if listeners are interested, we have a podcast with Joseph Trabek in our philosophy department going into some of Aquinas'proofs through the existence of God.
But in a way, what Lewis does, though, that I think is really good for the modern world is because, in a way, our view of the world has been so misshaped by modern rationalism and empiricism, where we think the only thing that is reasonable is that which I can see and touch. Is he kind of like, steps back and thinks about, well, the fact that I'm seeing it all. And he has this one scene or one little thing he describes where he says, if I'm looking out at the garden through a window, I forget I'm looking through a window. Right? But of course I'm looking through a window. So he says, we're so focused in the natural sciences today at looking at the world that we forget what are we looking at the world through? We're looking at the world through our own reason, our reasoning capacity. And that reasoning capacity can't be another thing that we're looking at because it's the very source of our looking.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Yes, and as you said, that's kind of presupposed by Thomas Aquinas. But the good thing about it for modern men is that he takes a premise that they can't deny that is reasoning valid?
Are inferences. Do they reach the outside world? If you say no to that, well, then there's no science, there's no knowledge, there's no nothing. So everybody has to agree with that first premise, even though, as you say, they'd never look at it. By the way, one example I give in class is this. Years ago, many years ago, there was a man driving his car across the state of Washington from Spokane to Seattle, and it's a dry, kind of almost desertic area, and there was a windstorm sandstorm that pocked his windshield. He got to Seattle, he made a claim for the insurance to pay for his new windshield, and it was refused. So there was a news story about this man whose pocked windshield did not qualify for insurance reimbursement.
Suddenly there were 10,000 people that reported pocked windshields. Why? Everybody's windshield is pocked a little bit, but you're not looking at the pock marks. You're looking through it. But when you suddenly stop and look at your windshield, oh my gosh, look at that. Look at that. So it's the same way with reasoning. We're looking through it or with it, but not at it. And that's why he calls it truncated thought. Thought is a pyramid with scientific thought and poetic thought and philosophic thought, and we've cut off the top, the metaphysical philosophic thought. And we're only looking at the material universe, cause and effect and explanation and so on. Yeah.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: So the way I would kind of one image that I love when he talks about this, because I do think this is a great thing just to start with, is first, rather than jumping into miracles. First is God. Does he exist? And he has this idea, though, where he says, right, the naturalist thinks that all there is is nature, and the supernaturalists think there's nature and God. But he says basically, if you think about a pond, it's interesting. He had a pond in his backyard with lilies, and apparently in a couple letters, he'd like to go skinny dipping in the morning in his backyard. But this is England of a number of years ago.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Covered by the ponds.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Covered by the he was hidden and.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Covered by the lilies. The lily pads. The lily pads. But he says basically but he takes that very thing. He just says, well, you might think when you see the lily pads that there's just an infinite pond underneath. Or you might say it goes all the way down. He says, right. The naturalist thinks the pond, nature, the great event in space and time, is of indefinite. If there is nothing but water, however far you go down. My claim is that some of the things on the surface, namely our own reason, show the contrary. The things the rational minds reveal an inspection that they are not floating, but that they are attached by stalks to the bottom. The pond has a bottom. So could you say a little bit about how he moves from reason to God?
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Yes, he's basically saying that two kinds of reason, speculative reason about the way things are, and moral reasoning about what things ought to be.
And he points out that we never accept anybody's claim as valid reasoning if we can explain it by natural causes. Oh, he said that because he was drunk or he supports private property because he's rich. Well, those aren't real reasons, are they? What does that mean? It means that if your judgments are based on something inside you, the atoms in your brain or your biases or whatever, we don't accept that that's true for reason as a whole. And that was his point, was if there's anything inside the world, inside nature which can't be explained by nature itself, there must be an explanation outside nature.
So he talks about both speculative thought and moral reasoning. Say that you can't explain this by cause and effect. I mean, if I say, well, you ought to be more kind, Michael. And you say, well, that's just how you but or is that an ought? Is that something which is really objectively reality there? And I gave this example the other night about I look out the window and I see the grass is wet this morning.
It must have rained last night. Or it must be dew, or it could be what do they call it? Wicking effect. But there's some cause there's some reason for that. But wait a minute. Where's that reason? I say it must have rained last night.
Where's the natural cause? That leads me to say that no, all it is is it's an inference I make from things which are factual, but it can't be explained by cause and effective nature. So that's just what number one, we all accept reasoning. And if you try and deny it, then there's no use arguing at all. If you look at reasoning carefully, the windshield looking at it, not through it, you see that wait a minute. This can't be the result of mere cause effect like billiard balls or molecules or atoms. But that's all there is in nature.
Unless there's something outside nature. Anyway, that's his argument, which I think is a brilliant argument. But because we are so used to thinking without thinking about thinking, it's hard to grasp. I find that with the students I got to repeat it many, many times.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think this really is a powerful insight by Lewis, where our own reasoning is already somewhat, in a technical sense, supernatural. It's above the natural cause and effect relations of physical causality. And if it is, then above that, then the question is, where does it come from? Exactly right. And since in us it's incomplete, it's partial, it has a beginning and an end, where it must come from something. It can't come from dirt. It has to come from something that is higher. And that would be right. An eternal, divine reason.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: That's right. And why I think this is so important for young people to realize and everybody but to start realizing when you're young is that you begin to see that either, I must say that thought doesn't reach truth, or if I'm going to say reasoning is valid. I must accept God for my reasoning. That is to say, God is present in my thoughts every thought that I have. And then, of course, once you realize that there must be a God in order for my thoughts to be valid, well, that is the same God on whom all the universe depends. Which then means that every quark, every atom, every molecule in this whole universe must be in the mind of God being thought by him and being loved by him every moment or would cease to exist. I mean, that is a mind blowing thought. But it's the truth. It's the truth. And therefore, as we walk, if I ever am thinking, well, does God exist at what maybe the table is here, isn't it? How could that be and remain in being unless God was thinking about every molecule right now?
It's a beautiful thought, right?
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And the infinite capacity, in a way, of our minds to come to know and love and wonder at the universe.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: That's something that and I think there's a way know first. And I think Newman kind of has an argument from conscience for the existence of God. And then I think Lewis kind of opens this up both with an argument from conscious but also just an argument from reason itself in all of its dimensions. And I think there's something that in a modern world that's very skeptical about everything else, it's really hard to deny that. And almost everybody wants to be right. Just notice if somebody says you're wrong, you don't like it. You want to say, no, I want to say that my beliefs about the world are true and good and right and that presupposes a standard. And as Lewis says, it just so simply in mere Christianity. But he right. If there's only because there's a straight line, can I recognize that a line is crooked.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: On the very argument? I mean, here's the little epigraph he uses for chapter five called A Further Difficulty in Naturalism.
He says even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behavior of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics. That is to say that all problems are caused by this economic dialectic. Right?
Freedom is not involved. It's the way economics works, okay?
Could subject it at other times to withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify. So they say, we're determined by the economic class that we're in. Well, if we're determined, then there's no right or wrong. We do what we do because we have to do it because we're part of this whole nexus of cause and effect. Well, then they try to say, yeah, but we have to get rid of the bourgeoisie. Well, wait a minute. You just told me that there is no free will. So why not tell me to try and do something? I can't help it. The dialectic made me do it anyway. But so Lewis points that out, that very thing, that moral reasoning. If you say, oh, well, it's your truth, or that's my truth.
Oh, you mean there's no truth out? No, no truth out there. Oh, yeah. Well, then how can there be your truth? Why are you telling me to not be a racist or not be a white supremacist or whatever you want to tell me or to affirm gender or anything?
[00:25:37] Speaker B: No, it really is. We can't stop, in a way, being truth seekers or moralists, and the goal is just to recognize that there's a source of that. So we're going to take a little break. And when we come back, I want to look really at this question of miracles first. What are they? Because Lewis has just, I think, a brilliant way of redescribing and reimagining what miracles are and then considering not only are they possible, why they might even be likely right and why they might have happened. So we'll talk about that after the break.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: All right, good.
[00:26:21] Speaker C: You're listening to the Catholic Theology Show, presented by Ave Maria University and sponsored in part by Annunciation Circle. Through their generous donations of $10 or more per month, annunciation Circle members directly support the mission of AMU to be a fountainhead of renewal for the church through our faculty, staff, students and alumni. To learn more, visit avemaria.edu join. Thank you for your continued support. And now let's get back to the show.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Welcome back to the Catholic Theology Show. I'm your host, Michael Doffinet. And today we've been joined by Father Joseph Fesio. So thank you so much for being on the show, Father.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: Sure, Michael.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: So we're talking about C. S. Lewis's great book, miracles, I think one of the most difficult, but also one of the most rewarding books of his writings.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: I agree.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: And so we talked a little bit about how he begins kind of with really taking seriously the objection and just the predominance of this naturalism materialism, says there is no God, and kind of undermining that I think at one point even says, right. Well, naturalism is a theory about the world, which means that I have a mind that is not determined by nature.
So that alone opens full of jewels.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: And gems like that. That's right.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: So now let's just say a little bit about how does he get to the question of miracles and their possibility. Right behind here he has in mind in part right, Hume's, David Hume's critique of miracles. Miracles are violations of the laws of nature.
Laws of nature do not get violated if somebody tells you there's a miracle, they might be wrong. But the laws of nature are never wrong. So therefore miracles are always ought never be believed. So how does Lewis kind of respond to right?
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Well, first, as you mentioned in the last session here, he starts with the question, do miracles occur? But to answer that question, you first have to answer preliminary question are they possible? And that's the first part of the book that he shows, that if we can think rationally, if our thoughts are valid, then there must be something outside nature which we call God, and so they're possible. How likely are they? Well, depends on what kind of God we have and whether nature will permit them. And here's where the argument comes. Well, no, the laws of nature are know, so you can't intervene. Well, Lewis typically so carefully analyzing things. Well, there's three ways we consider laws. One, they're brute facts, things just happen. Two, they're statistical averages. So a lot of things happen randomly, but all taken together they come like heads will come out 50% of the time if you flip the coin enough or they are necessary relationships.
And he says, well, if laws are just about brute facts, well, then anything could happen. So not only are miracles possible, you don't know what a miracle is or a regular thing is, because things just happen if they're statistical averages. Well, the question is are the dice loaded or not? Or does everything come out in such a way you can't alter the result? But most people think that laws are necessary relationships. Like if your momentum, an object will be transferred into the object once you hit it.
But laws don't create anything. Laws are like if A, then B, if you apply force to this cup, I can raise it off the table, but that may be a good example. Let's say if I set the billion ball rolling across the table, it will go in a straight line until it's moved another way and it's going to hit here.
But what if somebody knocks that? So you predict the ball is going to go from here to there. Somebody walks in and says Boom. And they bump that ball. Well, it's not going to go there, it's going to go here. Now why something has been added to that from outside.
So God doesn't break the laws. He adds something to what's taking place under the laws and therefore the result is different. As Lewis says, all these miracles interlock in a forward direction that when Jesus turns water into wine, you can get drunk on it, but water won't go into wine by itself. That's not natural. But if he turns it into wine, it's going to act like wine. But he hasn't broken any law, he's just added something. So that's sort of his.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I do love that image of right. Miracles are not violations of the laws of nature, they are additions to the events of nature.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: And he also has that fascinating idea where he simply says right one time, where he says, well, the laws of nature explain what happens when you have one set of events moving to another set of events. So he says, in that sense, the laws of. Nature explain everything except, well, everything, because the laws of nature only tell you what happens when you have events. But the laws of nature themselves don't create events.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: And so if the events then come from God and the laws come from God, then the God who creates the laws and creates the events of creation is not doing any violence to the laws or the events of creation when he adds additional events into the stream. And as he puts it right, it's like once Jesus is incarnate, once the Son of God takes on flesh inside the womb of Mary, well, he then takes nine months to be born, and then he takes 15 years to kind of reach physical maturity, right? All these different elements. So in that sense, the additional events actually end up conforming to the laws of nature after they've been added.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: And he actually expresses all that in a poem that he writes at the beginning of the book. Just like each chapter has an epigram which explains the chapter or Summarizes epitomizes the chapter, this poem epitomizes the whole book of just what you said. So it's a poem you wrote long ago. He says, 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. So a meteorite, something, comes from outside the planet and comes into the planet. So in a sense, it's supernatural in the sense that if the planet is nature and God is outside, the meteor comes down.
Thus easily can Earth digest a cinder of sidereal fire, starlike, fire, and make her translunary guest the native of an English hour. So it comes from outside, but it's absorbed by nature and becomes part of nature. Nor is it strange these wanderers and planeta in Greek means wander. These wanderers find in her lap their fitting place for every particle that's hers came at first from outer space, so that the Earth itself came from outside the earth, so to speak.
Nature came from God.
All that is Earth has once been sky down from the sun of old she came, or from some star that traveled 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. So beautiful metaphor here, simile or image, whatever, that just as the Earth was constituted by the sun, being particles of the sun coalescing or something like that, so it didn't create itself. It came from somewhere else. So likewise, if afterwards an additional part of the soul that, say, comes in, why it can be absorbed and become part of nature, it's a beautiful expression of the whole philosophical structure of this.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Book that really you know, there's a line from Lewis where he right. For me, reason is the organ of truth, but imagination the organ of meaning imagination is not the cause of truth, but its condition. Right. That truth only becomes meaningful to us when I can associate an image with it. We're not angels. We can't be.
So this idea that yeah, that's God's action on nature is kind of outside our ability to imagine because it's God, but we can imagine the world that already came from outside the world and then these other things enter in. So in the same way, God who created nature is simply in miracles, kind of almost like touching up his painting, so to speak. He's just furthering the creation. And this is where I think he raises a secondary idea, which is, okay, if miracles are possible, then the question is who is God? Right. What kind of God do we have so that we might begin to think God, that miracles are likely. So could you say a little bit about that or some other themes?
[00:36:09] Speaker A: Yes, because he has a chapter on that too, that God is the perfect workman. Right.
So why would he adjust or come in and fix or try know, change what he did? Wasn't it good enough to start with?
Well, Lewis will say that, yeah, God's a beautiful man, but he gave us something which he couldn't control, namely free will. And so, yes, the world was created as paradise, as perfection, but Satan and we have disordered it. And so now it's not his work, which is bad, but if he created out of love so that we might be with Him forever and we turn away from Him, then would he not, because he's love, want to try and do something to bring us back?
Of course, that's the great Patristic theme of egress and return, reditus and Exodus or Exodus and Reditus, that God creates the world and we sin and it's meant to come back to Him, but we turned away from Him and then God into the world. Why would he do that? Because why would he make the world in the first place except for us? He didn't need it. And by the way, Michael, I want to give you a little image which I came know lewis can throw off images and comparisons like Jess and Ken, page after page. I can do one or two in a lifetime. But I had this one, which is imagine that we are facing the sun and we are solar panel operated objects, okay? And we're facing the sun, no battery, but just a solar panel which gives us energy to do what we're doing.
And God says to us the closed door, he says, well, don't look behind you gosh. Why not? If we turn around, all of a sudden we stop. We can't turn back because we no longer have our solar panels turned towards the sun.
So he told us not to turn around. Why? Not to give us an arbitrary order, but because he knew that he wanted to give us the freedom to say, turn towards Him. But he told us, don't turn around, because if we do, we'll lose our source of energy. So that's kind of this way about a miracle. God creates us to radiate his energy and use that energy co creating with Him or subcreating with Him, maybe, as Tolkien would say, but that if we abuse that, then only he can bring us back. So that's kind of the kind of God that would interfere in the work he did, even it was a perfect work to start with.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So the miracles, then, are not arbitrary interventions. They're not random.
They all kind of have one singular purpose of really redeeming and restoring man into right relationship with God. And it's also you can think about well, because there obviously was an attempt in the last several hundred years, modernity and in the Enlightenment, to kind of try to demiracalize demythologize the Christian story.
Everybody from Thomas Jefferson to Rudolph Boltman has attempted this, and yet, if you think about it, it's also wait a second. Like the Christian story, as Lewis puts it, is simply a story of a miracle. And I love this line from Matthew at the end. But he simply says, when the women come to find Jesus, the angels say, do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Right. The entire faith is basically in the resurrected Jesus.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: That's the great miracle. I mean, incarnation, resurrection, everything else is totally secondary to that. And if you can believe that, how can you not believe things which are related to that, which are far inferior to yeah, even I think it was.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Pascal who said something. If you can believe in the incarnation and the resurrection, why do you have a problem with the Eucharist? Exactly right. Just kind of so I think there's two things. One is, if we believe in Christianity, we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is really what it is. And that his resurrection and his death and resurrection somehow put us right with God, the notion of the redemption. But it's also the case that and this is where I think Lewis has a genuine insight that's novel in a way, is that every other miracle finds its identity in that one miracle. So every miracle in the Old Testament, insofar as it's really prefiguring that, and every miracle done by the apostles is prefiguring. So, for instance, why did Jesus heal some people and not heal others? Well, because the healings were not the point. The healings were kind of the demonstration of the eventual healing and recovery of all human beings. Also, and I share this sometimes with students that it's like when somebody gets sick, when somebody gets cancer, you form a prayer chain. You form like, hey, let's all pray for that. Well, sometimes the person gets better and sometimes the person doesn't. Does God love the one person more than the other? Do the parents of the one child just not pray enough? Right. That would be a misunderstanding. We have to recognize that every miracle that happens, if it's a physical miracle of healing in this life, is nothing other than a participation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's just a little echo of it. And every miracle, in a way that doesn't happen is just as much a participation in the miracle of the resurrection because the physical healing is only secondary, and that person who may die from cancer may also share in that resurrection. So all miracles, in a way, have their kind of fundamental identity when we look back to Jesus Christ.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: Right? But of course, you bring up the question of a good God who's all wise and all powerful being, allowing innocence to suffer. But the point is, Lewis will compare God to an author of a story whose characters have free will, but that he also can control a lot of the conditions of the story and can intervene at some points. But we don't know the author's total intention. We're not God.
As God said to Catherine Sienna. I'm God. You're not.
Yes.
So we don't understand. But on this idea of prayer, mean, I want to recommend very strongly Appendix B, the last part of this book, because you have a question. When I pray, how can I pray for someone who is deceased, for his salvation of his soul when he died? His dive is judged on what he did in his life. So what good does it do to pray for the salvation of someone who's died? Well, Lewis explains in the Appendix B that for God, all times are present. So when I'm praying to God for, you know, great great grandfather is still alive in the eyes of God, so my prayer now can actually have an effect on my great great grandfather.
It's a mystery. It's a beautiful mystery. But at the same time, God will answer the prayer, but sometimes the answer is no.
And Luke has a great example of this elsewhere, too, with the know what man will give his son a scorpion instead of an egg. Okay?
But the thing is, when we ask God for a scorpion, he'll give us an know it's just the opposite type thing.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: Wow. That's a great image. Yeah, that's a great just I think as we talk a little bit more, then Lewis offers another image, talks about the grand miracle, the incarnation. This is really the central meaning. Miracles are not arbitrary. They're a divine rescue mission.
It's not that complicated. In a way. We've sinned. We've turned away. We've turned around from God. Rather than imaging God, we image ourselves and therefore corrupt ourselves. So God enters into the world to rescue us. He begins with the prophets, Moses and all of this. But in Jesus Christ, he does it definitively. So he also raises, though, this image that I actually remember you giving a homily on this probably back like maybe in 2004, but I remember it very clearly. I don't remember if it was an Easter Vigil or not, but I remember you speaking of miracles of the old creation and miracles of the new creation. And I think this is one of those things that once you begin to see it, you can't kind of unsee. And all the miracles that before looked somewhat OD or arbitrary, now they begin to disclose meaning. So could you talk a little bit about that?
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Yes, he has a chapter called Miracles of the Old Creation, and he has as the epigram to that chapter from St. John, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do well, changing water into wine. I happen to have a vineyard. I happen to grow grapes and I make wine. And so I see every year water, and I irrigate after it rains, being transformed through those grapes into wine. So it's happening all the time. It's a miracle of a kind.
So when Jesus turns water into wine, he's doing the same thing his Father's doing all the time. He's just doing it know or multiplication of loaves. I also have a wheat field because I grow wheat for my hosts and I grow wine for the know. This is a little side note, but a lot of people don't like the new Offroy prayers. They think the old ones were better and they might have been better. But I just love this because my chapel at our retreat house faces the wheat field in front and my vineyard on the right. And so when I say fruit of the earth working your hands, I'm holding a host that I actually harvested from that wheat field. And then fruit of the vine working hands, I'm using that wine from that vineyard over there. So I love the new offroad prayers, but the point is, God is multiplying wheat all the time, by the way, 30, 60 hundredfold, that's how much you get out of wheat, right? Well, I planted ten pounds of wheat and I got ten pounds back. I got one fold. I tried it again and got five pounds back. Tried it again, got one pounds back. Remember Emmy who was here? She married a guy who's a wheat farmer. He came and he says, Father, you need to use roundup. So I did. I got 70 pounds out of ten. That's seven fold. I'm thinking, what is this, 30 fold? See, I went on the Internet, the best yield you can get anywhere is in Kansas, 22 fold.
Why did Jesus get to 30, 6100? Were those Palestinian farmers? Did they have some kind of secret we've lost? No, Jesus is telling us that with Him we have an abundance which can't be matched at all.
But anyway, in this miracle of Jesus multiplying the loaves. He's doing what the Father does doing right now, making one grain of wheat become 22 grains of wheat.
[00:48:05] Speaker B: Yes. Right. And Lewis, in an essay called Miracles will say that he actually kind of saw this in Athanasius on the incarnation of the Word, when he actually describes Athanasius makes one moment where he basically says right, the Word does you know that Jesus is the Creator incarnate because the works he does are creative works. They're the works of the Creator. So it's also interesting to see how Lewis takes these kind of almost like hidden gems of the fathers and yet makes them so alive and even. Right. Calming the storm. Well, storms always calm.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:48:43] Speaker B: But he does suddenly and locally what God is always doing what he as God is always doing slowly and globally. And then say a word, please, about the and we should probably begin making sure we get towards the end of our time. But what about the miracles of the new creation?
[00:49:00] Speaker A: Those are things which have not been done, like walking on water or like raising from the dead.
That was never done in the old creation. Nature doesn't do that. Water doesn't support you, and dead people don't rise. But those are miracles which are following from as opposed to leading up to the grand miracle, right?
[00:49:24] Speaker B: Yes. And so in that sense, right. They're kind of miracles that in a way kind of begin to show us how the new creation will work.
[00:49:30] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:49:30] Speaker B: Right. How heaven in Heaven, we would have physical I mean, just like I have some my hands are under control of my mind most of the time. What if matter were under the control of a mind?
[00:49:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: But what if I were under the control of God, you know what I mean? That I were completely free and willing and at the same time in complete harmony with my Divine Father. Right. That in a certain sense is the fullness. And we see that in Jesus Christ, which is why he rises and ascends to the Father and so that we also will share in that new creation.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: And Lewis actually says that in this book. He says that in the beginning, man was obedient to God and nature was obedient to man.
But when man turned away from God, then nature turned away from man. And that's why we have to work and toil flood of our know.
[00:50:20] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And which is why, of course, Jesus isn't just born and rise and ascend to Heaven. Right. He has to die on the cross and somehow take on all of this disfigurement, this ugliness, our own woundedness, everything from sickness and death. Not that he sinned. Right? But that he took on all the effects of sin and kind of put all of those to death. He puts death to death so that we may truly live.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: He dies for us in this sense. He takes us into himself and dies, and we die in Him, and he rises for us, and we do that, but we participate in Christ. I said mass this morning. Not everybody was there, but I was saying Mass, not just for me, but for all those who weren't saying Mass, all those who weren't at Mass. I'm doing that for them. Just like Jesus said his mass for me.
[00:51:12] Speaker B: Wow.
What a beautiful thing. And you did say that Miracles is a hard book. You've been teaching it for many years. Hopefully, some of our listeners can simply kind of enjoy and benefit from some of the insights that Lewis has offered and that we've.
[00:51:29] Speaker A: Should.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: If people were to pick up the book, do you think they should just start with chapter one, read it slowly.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: Surely, but it's a perfect book for a reading group to get four or five people. It's not impenetrable. And in fact, chapter three is the hardest of the whole book. Once you get by that, it's clearly expressed. It's deeply pondered by him. But I think at the level, anybody who's serious about trying to think about.
[00:52:00] Speaker B: Life and the faith, well, that's so well put. So thank you very much, Father Fesio, for being on our show.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: And for people who are interested in learning more about Ignatius Press, is it Ignatius?
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Ignatius.Com.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: Ignatius.Com. And Father Fesio has also been on our podcast before we did an episode on.
So, you know, please consider listening to that if you're interested. And as always, we are so grateful for your support. We're grateful for your listening to the show. Please continue to share us with your friends and family.
So thanks again, Father, for being god bless you all.
[00:52:44] Speaker C: Thank you so much for joining us for this podcast. If you like this episode, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app to help others find the show. And if you want to take the next step, please consider joining our annunciation circle so we can continue to bring you more free content.
We'll see you next time on The Catholic Theology Show.
