C.S. Lewis on Old Testament Miracles

[mcarans]

C.S. Lewis gives his take on Old Testament Miracles. "Just as God is none the less God by being Man, so the Myth remains Myth even when it becomes Fact". More here:

C.S. Lewis on Old Testament Miracles : cruciformity

Do you think he is right?

 

[Tolworth John]

C.S. Lewis gives his take on Old Testament Miracles. "Just as God is none the less God by being Man, so the Myth remains Myth even when it becomes Fact". More here:

C.S. Lewis on Old Testament Miracles : cruciformity

Do you think he is right?

No.
"This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history (as Euhemerus thought) nor diabolical illusion (as some of the Fathers thought) nor priestly lying (as the philosophers of the Enlightenment thought) but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination."

God is able to inform his prophets and biblical writers of what he wants them to record, not as missunderstood fables but as accurate devine truth.

 

[Theophilus2019]

C S Lewis used an odd definition of “myth”. Myth is usually thought of as a mere story that isn’t true. If I understand it correctly, C S Lewis’ usage of “myth” was along the lines of a story that was “true” in the sense of accurately And more profoundly depicting reality, but in a figurative way. So Lewis could talk about the “true myth.”

 

[Quasiblogo]

I was under the armchair impression that Lewis believed that when divine revelation hits someone upside the head, and it is literally received, in addition to heart-reception and reason-acceptance, there is also imagination-incorporation, because imagination is unavoidably part of our thinking process. Could it be that Lewis, for sake of illustration, classified the story of salvation history as "myth" to show the value of a sanctifying imagination? Was the meaning of "myth" stretched much like he stretched the connotation of "joy"?

Theophilus, I noticed your response as soon as I posted.

 

[mcarans]

C S Lewis used an odd definition of “myth”. Myth is usually thought of as a mere story that isn’t true. If I understand it correctly, C S Lewis’ usage of “myth” was along the lines of a story that was “true” in the sense of accurately And more profoundly depicting reality, but in a figurative way. So Lewis could talk about the “true myth.”

As Marcus Borg put it "stories can be true without being literally and factually true".

 

[Bob Crowley]

Christ used myth Himself to illustrated truths about the Kingdom of Heaven.

For example His story of Dives and Lazarus may or may not have been literally true. Two characters named Dives and Lazarus may never have encountered each other in real life, in the circumstances described by Christ in His parable, but for the purposes of illustrating a moral truth, a fictitious story was all that was needed.

Similarly just as Jonah was never meant to be taken literally, but illustrated a story about God's forgiveness in the main, just as the captive Jews represented by Jonah hated the cruel Babylonians, and didn't want to have to forgive them, or call them to repent. It was a myth pointing to a divine fact, and Christ made use of it in allegorical form saying He would spend three days in the belly of the earth just as Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale (or fish).

Secondly CS Lewis was an expert in the area of mythology, admitting he had a particular liking for Norse Mythology (if I remember rightly), so we need to be aware of his own personal willingness to ascribe aspects of myth in his apologetics. The Narnia Chronicles are almost a retelling of some aspects of Norse mythology (the Wicked Queen for example rules over an icy wasteland).