Lewis on Spirit and Body

9 March 2024

“[T]he relations which we now observe between [the] spirit and [body] are abnormal or pathological ones. At present spirit can retain its foothold against the incessant counter-attacks of Nature (both physiological and psychological)_ only by perpetual vigilance, and physiological Nature always defeats in the end. Sooner or later it becomes unable to resist the disintegrating processes at work in the body and death ensues. A little later the Nature organism (for it does not long enjoy its triumph) is similarly conquered by merely physical Nature and returns to the inorganic. But, on the Christian view, this was not always so. The spirit was once not a garrison, maintaining its post with difficulty in a hostile Nature, but was fully ‘at home’ with its organism, like a king in his own country or a rider on his own horse—or better still, as the human part of a Centaur was ‘at home’ with the equine part. Where spirit’s power over the organism was complete and unresisted, death would never occur. No doubt, spirit’s permanent triumph over natural forces which, if left to themselves, would kill the organism, would involve a continued miracle: but only the same sort of miracle which occurs every day—for whenever we think rationally we are, by direct spiritual power, forcing certain atoms in our brain and certain psychological tendencies in our natural soul to do what they would never have done if left to Nature. The Christian doctrine would be fantastic [i.e., unbelievable – ed.] only if the present frontier-situation between spirit and Nature in each human being were…self-explanatory. But is it?
In reality the frontier situation is so odd that nothing but custom could make it seem natural, and nothing but Christian doctrine can make it fully intelligible.”
-C. S. Lewis, Miracles

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Despoiling the Egyptians

2 March 2024

“Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it. For, as the Egyptians had not only the idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a better use, not doing this on their own authority, but by the command of God, the Egyptians themselves, in their ignorance, providing them with things which they themselves, were not making a good use of; in the same way all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel.”

-Augustine, On Christian Doctrine

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Supernaturalism

19 February 2024

Check out this post from Douglas Wilson, talking some hard sense about the supernatural. Money quote: “The first point is that while the Bible teaches us the reality of the spiritual world, it also teaches us that that world, like the physical world around us, is filled with liars. When we enter the spiritual realm, the need to have every fact established with two or three witnesses, and confirmed as being in line with the Word, does not go away.”

Amen.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Those Little Old Ladies

30 July 2023

“We have to cultivate a certain kind of character in order to read well. It’s not just a matter of applying hermeneutical rules or a typological framework; it’s about the kind of person you are.  That’s why the little old ladies at your church who’ve never been to a hermeneutics class in their life, but have spent a life in the word, spent a life in prayer, have suffered and seen the Lord deliver them from suffering—those little old ladies understand so much of the Bible that you don’t. Because they are disciples, and they know that they are encountering God in the pages of Scripture.”

-Peter Leithart on hermeneutics

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Worst of Both Worlds

2 April 2020

We live in a society where claiming victimhood can give a person enormous rhetorical and moral leverage, whether the claim is legitimate or not. The result is a whole class of people who have forgotten how to argue, whose only tool is a sense of perpetual offense. Such a thing is only possible in a society that has spent the last two millennia worshipping a crucified Messiah. Such a thing is only possible when that society rejects the Messiah, and thereby loses the ability to leaven its compassion with the knowledge of good and evil.

We have the worst of both worlds: we bear the consequences of eating the fruit, but our eyes have not been opened.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

John Donne on Suffering

15 June 2008

I recently renewed my acquaintance with John Donne’s Devotions, an outstanding work I first met as a senior in high school. As it always does, the closing passage from Meditation XVII really struck me.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

(The bold emphasis is mine.)

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Posted by Tim Nichols