If the laws of Nature are necessary truths, no miracle can break them: but then no miracle needs to break them. It is with them as with the laws of arithmetic. If I put six pennies into a drawer on Monday and six more on Tuesday, the laws decree that—other things being equal—I shall find twelve pennies there on Wednesday. But if the drawer has been robbed I may in fact find only two. Something will have been broken (the lock of the drawer or the laws of England) but the laws of arithmetic will not have been broken. The new situation created by the thief will illustrate the laws of arithmetic just as well as the original situation. But if God comes to work miracles, He comes ‘like a thief in the night.’ Miracle is, from the point of view of the scientist, a form of doctoring, tampering, (if you like) cheating. It introduces a new factor into the situation, namely supernatural force, which the scientist had not reckoned on. He calculates what will happen, or what must have happened on a past occasion, in the belief that the situation, at that point of space and time, is or was A. But if supernatural force has been added, then the situation really is or was AB. And no one knows better than the scientist that AB cannot yield the same result as A. The necessary truth of the laws, far from making it impossible that miracles should occur, makes it certain that if the Supernatural is operating they must occur. For if the natural situation by itself, and the natural situation plus something else, yielded only the same result, it would be then that we should be faced with a lawless and unsystematic universe. The better you know that two and two make four, the better you know that two and three don’t.
— C.S. Lewis
Cited from Miracles (New York: HarperOne, 1947), 21-22.
Despite pennies being pilfered from a drawer, the laws of arithmetic remain in effect. 2+2=4 remains true. Miracles are never contrary to the laws of nature. Laws of nature would even remain operative even during the occurrence of a miracle. Christianity speaks of the virgin birth, restoring sight to the blind, allowing the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, and the resurrection from the dead, yet such miracles never suspend any law of nature. The laws of nature remain in effect when supernatural intervention takes place. Gravity will send a coffee cup down to the ground. If one catches the cup, gravity still operates, but the hand intervenes the fall. Proven laws of nature never preclude divine miracles.
Clive Staples Lewis (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) was an exceptional scholar, novelist, and Christian apologist from the Anglican tradition. Chronicles of Narnia serves as a fine example of Lewis as a prolific storyteller who captivated the imaginations of multitudes. A learned scholar with expertise in medieval and Renaissance literature, Lewis also authored numerous fiction and non-fiction works that touched on matters of philosophy and Christian apologetics.
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