C.S. Lewis ( 10 of 145 )
Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
The rejection as unhistorical of all passages which narrate miracles is sensible if we start by knowing that the miraculous... read more
The rejection as unhistorical of all passages which narrate miracles is sensible if we start by knowing that the miraculous... never occurs. Now, I do not want here to discuss whether the miraculous is possible: I only want to point out that this is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon, "If miraculous, unhistorical", is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the Biblical critics in the world counts for nothing. On this they speak simply as men -- men obviously influenced by, and perhaps insufficiently critical of, the spirit of the age they grew up in.
Those who talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main read more
Those who talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main thing it is about; like reading Burke with no interest in politics, or reading the Aeneid with no interest in Rome... But there is a saner sense in which the Bible -- since it is, after all, literature -- cannot properly be read except as literature, and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are. Most emphatically, the Psalms must be read as poems -- as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry... Otherwise we shall miss what is in them and think we see what is not.
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.
Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is
Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than read more
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of read more
Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is best
Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.
Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.
Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 Can we believe that God ever modifies His action in read more
Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 Can we believe that God ever modifies His action in response to the suggestions of man? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will. "God", says Pascal, "instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality." But it is not only prayer; whenever we act at all, He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so.
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is read more
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world
